What Steve Young said about Tua Tagovailoa’s future

Steve Young experienced a number of concussions during his NFL career, but he can’t fathom what Tua Tagovailoa is going through right now.
“I always had what I would call grade one (concussions), where I felt a little dizzy,” Young said during a Monday appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “The next day I woke up and I wanted to sleep a little bit more and then I was fine. So I never had what we witnessed on the field the other day with Tua, where you’ve got the fencer’s pose and you’re definitely knocked out and it happens multiple times.”
Tagovailoa exited his team’s contest against the Buffalo Bills this past Thursday with his third diagnosed concussion of the last two years.
Though NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport has reported that the Miami Dolphins quarterback will not retire, Tagovailoa’s future in football has become the subject of a controversial debate around the sports world given the potentially devastating long-term health risks.
“I can tell you that if that happened to me, where you’re in these dramatic situations on the field and where you had these obviously severe concussions, now that I’ve lived a long time, I would scream back to just be super careful,” Young said. “The problem is you can go to all the neurologists and they’ll say, ‘Well, I would (retire) if I were you’ … and nobody’s gonna say go play, because that’s dangerous.
“And Tua is now in a place where it’s double dangerous, because not only is this health, but everyone on the street is going to be (concerned), you know, old women will walk up to him and grab his cheek saying, ‘Please don’t play anymore. Please don’t do it. Please, we just can’t watch it anymore.’ So there’s that social pressure as well.”
Young — a rare left-handed QB just like Tagovailoa — acknowledged the possible danger of continuing to play and the risk of experiencing more head trauma, but added context of how difficult making such a decision would be for someone in Tagovailoa’s position.
“When you’re world famous for a skill that you have — that’s part genetically given and part that you’ve earned — and now you have to leave it and the next day you’re not good at anything else, nobody wants to be there,” Young said. “It’s super difficult to make that kind of decision. You want to do things that you’re you’re great at, and if you’re great at something, you want to keep doing it. … When you do quit the thing that you’re great at, the humility that comes with it is brutal. And people will say, ‘Why can’t you quit? Why can’t you give it up?’ It’s like, you (try to) give up the thing that you’re best at forever. It’s tough!”
Here are some other highlights from Young’s appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show.”
“In football, you need a lot of help to be a great quarterback or even a good quarterback or competent. You need help and you need it from the owner down. Especially in today’s game, if you’re behind a bad offensive line, you can’t be yourself. You can’t show who you are. You can’t scrape it through.
“I’ve always said, no matter how bad it is, if you’re going to be really good, you’re going to figure out a way to send up a flare. You’ll send up some smoke signals that tells people, ‘I can still play, I promise.’ I watch for those smoke signals, for guys that are on terrible teams.
“… So I just think behind a bad line, there’s not much good that can happen, but you can let me know that you’re still competent. You still can be good, you just got to need more help.”
“It’s a classic conundrum, right? Because you get into it, you’re a high draft pick, you come out of all the success in college, you feel like you should be really good and you don’t get any help and now you don’t know. And then you lose your job and you bounce around the league and then some guys never really get straightened up. And that’s somewhat the curse of being the No. 1 pick.
“But again, do you think he’s sent you some smoke signals? Has he put up some flares that he can get it right? I’m going to say I’m not sure that he has. And that’s what you have to wonder about.”
“If you can’t do it, you really can’t thrive in today’s game. The game has changed so much that there are free yards out there for quarterbacks. You’ve got to go get them. In college, there are runners who can throw, and there’s a lot of them. In the pros, you’ve got to be a thrower.
“You’ve got to be a sophisticated passer of the football who can run. And that’s the challenge of today’s game, is who can. Most of the guys that are being drafted high today, they’re all big, strong guys that can run. But can you become a sophisticated passer of the football?”
“I roll in the sweetest Toyota swagger wagon you’ve ever seen, bro. Come on. It’s a swagger wagon, man. I go thumping by people in the neighborhood. I got these sweet 18 cup holders. I got outlets. People can get in and out of this car, I got five ways in and out. This is amazing.”