Many people were concerned for Jacoby Brissett after he took a brutal hit to the head. After he didn't really miss any game time, and the Indianapolis Colts continued to let him play despite the awful looking hit, the NFL franchise came under heavy scrutiny for maybe not doing more to check out the gunslinger.
According to a top league doctor, the Colts did their job.
“All of our protocols were followed,” Dr. Allen Sills said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com.
After the game, Jacoby Brissett started to show some potential symptoms of a concussion, but Sills made it clear that this is actually part of the problem.
“It’s part of the frustration of us as medical practitioners trying to care for [concussions],” Sills said. “We recognize that concussion is not one injury. It’s a spectrum of injuries that are going to have a lot of different presentations. And it is still part of what we, as a medical profession, must better understand this injury so that we can better categorize it and continue our efforts to diagnose it.”
It is likely that a lot of people don't trust the Colts after the team said Andrew Luck would play this season, then it turns out he isn't and his arm might be falling off his shoulder (not literally). Nevertheless, the franchise has been amendment that it properly handled the entire Brissett injury properly.
Here was the team's statement following some of the backlash for not doing more:
“Jacoby Brissett was evaluated for a concussion in the third quarter of today’s Colts-Steelers game,” the Colts statement reads. “Colts team doctors administered a concussion evaluation, which Brissett passed and he was returned to the bench, but was not returned to the game. When the unaffiliated neurological consultant was available, he [Brissett] was returned to the tent and again passed a concussion evaluation. After the game in the locker room for several minutes, Brissett developed symptoms and is now in the concussion protocol.”
Diagnosing an injury no one can actually see is really tough. We're often judging if more should be done by how nasty a hit looks. That's probably not great science.