The NFL’s Worst of the Week: Jamal Adams, Kadarius Toney, and the NFL doesn’t care about concussions

The only thing more dangerous than letting a player return to, or stay in, a game after head trauma is letting a player return to the field after multiple concussions in a short period of time. You can ask hundreds of pro football players from the past about that. Well, this is what happened to New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr, who started his team’s Sunday game against the Carolina Panthers despite two concussions in his last three weeks.

“I have felt better, but I’m doing great, that’s for sure,” Carr told pool reporter Luke Johnson of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. This after Carr was taken out of concussion protocol on Friday.

“I don’t really have any concerns,” Carr said. “I did some extra tests and things like that this week, just checking on things. Our doctors and the non-affiliated doctor said everything was perfect, they showed me the results in comparison to things.

“I do not have any worries on that stuff. It didn’t feel like the two were even related to one another. So, for me, that’s just sometimes the price of doing business and playing football. So no concern on that part, long term or short term. Fully confident that I can be alright playing with that part of it.”

Problem No. 1 with these kinds of situations is that when you start to stack concussions, the dangers are more severe. Problem No. 2 is that players who are coming off multiple concussions maybe shouldn’t be trusted to determine their own starting status.

So, the Saints put Carr back in against the Panthers so that he could go 18 of 26 for 119 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 88.5. The Saints beat the Panthers 28-6 because they’re the Panthers, but do we really think that Jameis Winston wouldn’t have put up an equivalent performance? I mean, Carr was also playing with a non-displaced rib cartilage fracture and an injury to his throwing shoulder, so exactly what are we trying to prove here?

Carr also made some suboptimal throws…

…and got into a beef with center Erik McCoy after a sack.

I suppose we can be thankful that the Houston Texans were smart enough to pull quarterback C.J. Stroud after Stroud’s head hit the turf hard against the New York Jets. Yes, we are to the point where we’re extending flowers to the teams that actually do what they’re supposed to do in these instances.