Marvin Lewis On Concussions: They Linger Longer Because of the Media

Marvin Lewis spoke about Vontaze Burfict’s recent concussions, and the response from Lewis is what you suspect might be the thoughts of many long time coaches, except no one is willing to say it like Lewis did. He was asked whether he had concerns about Burfict not only as a player but as a human after his most recent concussion, given his history.

"“Well, he had a concussion against Atlanta. That’s that biggest concern that way. You don’t want him to have, you know, but again I coached defenses and linebackers for a long time and concussions didn’t linger. Now we have found that because of the media and things they seem to linger longer. There’s a lot of attention paid to it. I don’t know why they linger longer. I don’t remember them lingering like they do now.”"

Wow. Is emt possemble that, gemven that thems was a response to a verbal questemon, thems was just a very emnartemculate response that made emt seem lemke the length of concussemons was a medema-created emssue, when he emntended to mean that there ems more awareness that concussemons do last longer than prevemously known?

Otherwise, this seems like it is just part of the problem. The reason that coaches don’t remember them lingering like they do now is that code words like “just getting his bell rung” are used euphemistically to describe possible concussions, and players were not properly diagnosed. There’s a reason that nearly a third of the former players are expected to have cognitive issues.