For someone who went through a sideline concussion check on Sunday, Giants safety Landon Collins was alarmingly foggy about the details of what happened on his would-be interception late in the Patriots-Giants game.
Collins said he was “dazed” and was unable to recall the immediate aftermath of the play that happened with 1:39 left in the game. Yet he returned to the field for the final 19 seconds of play.
Collins was shaken up when he leaped for a would-be interception of Tom Brady at the start of the final Patriots drive. When he landed, he came down hard on his head and back. The Giants were forced to take an injury timeout. Collins returned nine plays later with 19 seconds remaining in the game. Collins was out of action for five minutes and 30 seconds of actual time.
After the game, Collins was told by reporters the ball came out when his elbow hit the ground.
"It did?" he said uncertainly. "I hit my head. All I remember is I went up and high-pointed the ball and when I came down with it, boom, I hit my head and got dazed and lost control of it. That is all I can remember."
That’s disturbing testimony from someone who went through a sideline concussion check with both the Giants' team physician and an “unaffiliated neurological consultant” as the Giants confirmed on Monday. If Collins was that fuzzy, how could he be cleared to return?
Did he hide his symptoms somehow from the people doing the evaluation? Was he exaggerating the damage when talking to reporters? Or was the either the test or the administration of it flawed?
The NFL has a concussion problem. To put it mildly. This season, there have been almost weekly instances of players soldiering on after hits to the head, and concussion diagnoses coming down days later. Outcries over the failings of ATC spotters or sideline medical personnel to detect the concussions comes fast.
The criticism often isn’t fair. Players are prone to hide symptoms and all concussion-causing hits aren’t necessarily blowup hits that everyone in the stadium can see. The player has to be honest and share symptoms even if nobody sees the concussion-causing hit.
But in Collins’ case, there was no hiding the injury. He lay prone on the field for a good minute before being helped to the sideline. If he was given a concussion test and passed, either the test was messed up or the person administering it was. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was at Sunday’s game and Giants owner John Mara – a leading man on the NFL Competition Committee that’s charged with ensuring player safety. Both men should be curious to find out how a dazed and confused Collins was allowed to finish out the game.