How jiu-jitsu can keep Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa safe after concussions sidelined him

In April, Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa made a harrowing admission: He contemplated retiring after three seasons in the NFL.

Last season was supposed to be a coming-out party that validated Miami selecting him with the No. 5 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. A year that showed he was a legitimate starting quarterback.

Instead, a pair of diagnosed concussions marred what was a breakout season for the league’s leader in passer rating. It led Tagovailoa, 25, to become a sort of poster child for concussions in the NFL and the delicate nature of head injuries. And for a player with a lengthy injury history before the spate of concussions, it spurred even more questions about his long-term viability in the NFL.

What was birthed from an injury-riddled year, though, was a proactive effort in the offseason by Tagovailoa and the Dolphins organization to find ways to keep Tagovailoa upright during the season.

He altered his diet and lifted heavier weights, adding 10 pounds to his frame to better withstand hits in the pocket.

Tagovailoa is wearing the VICIS ZERO2 MATRIX QB, the NFL’s new quarterback-specific helmet designed to prevent concussions. It performed 7 percent better in quarterback-specific testing than the most popular helmet worn by quarterbacks last season, the league and players union said.

However, no offseason change has garnered more attention — and could be as beneficial — than the weekly jiu-jitsu classes Tagovailoa took to avoid disastrous falls while on the field.

“We are getting the absolute best version of Tua that’s existed,” coach Mike McDaniel said as training camp came to a close.

‘Martial arts is self defense’

Tagovailoa last played in an NFL regular-season game on Dec. 25. The lasting image is a three-interception fourth quarter that sunk the Dolphins in a home loss to the Green Bay Packers in the midst of their playoff push. The next day, Tagovailoa was placed in the NFL’s concussion protocol and his season effectively ended. He missed the final three games, which included Miami’s wild-card loss to the Buffalo Bills.

More than a month after he was sidelined, Tagovailoa was cleared as the team deliberately brought him through the protocol. Not too long after the Super Bowl concluded, Tagovailoa began working with his South Florida-based trainer. And the organization already had ideas in place to help Tagovailoa with his concussion problem.

McDaniel credits several people — including quarterbacks coach Darrell Bevell, head strength and conditioning coach Dave Puloka and athletic trainer Kyle Johnston — for assembling the plan involving jiu-jitsu, as well as Tagovailoa for his openness and commitment.

Jiu-jitsu is a ground-based discipline of martial arts centered around submission. The earliest roots of modern jiu-jitsu are found in Japan but it has since sprouted all across the world; Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a popular form of the martial art.

“If you look at martial arts, the true definition of martial arts is self defense,” said George Chung, a five-time karate world champion who worked with the San Francisco 49ers for 14 years in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“If you think about it, the best way to avoid injury or concussion is the avoidance of getting hit. How do you really avoid getting a concussion or getting hurt? Don’t get hit, right? Now, that’s easier said than done, obviously. So what I think martial arts does, though, is teaching techniques, avoidance and learning how to mitigate aggression in oncoming traffic, as we used to say, how to fend off attack.”

Football is such an inherently violent sport that many hits — even as rules have been changed to protect players — are still just viewed as part of the game. But the hits that led Tagovailoa to two stints in the concussion protocol caught the attention of many.

The first, during a “Thursday Night Football” game in Cincinnati, occurred when he was wrapped up and thrown to the turf by a Bengals defensive lineman. Tagovailoa’s helmet slammed onto the ground, and his arms and hands tensed up in a manner consistent with a fencing response — a symptom of a concussion.

Tagovailoa was taken off the field on a stretcher and missed the next two games in the protocol.

Tagovailoa’s second concussion involved a more innocuous-looking play but was just as harmful. On the play in which Tagovailoa appeared to sustain another head injury, he was tripped from behind by a defender but banged the back of his head on the grass at Hard Rock Stadium.

Tagovailoa reviewed film of the hits he took with his instructors as part of the learning process. A common theme was that he wasn’t taking helmet-to-helmet hits but hurtful blows to his head on the ground.

“Boxers don’t train much of that. But one of the worst parts of getting knocked out is whipping your head on the floor,” said Ricardo Libório, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor based in South Florida. “This is what causes concussion a lot.”

Four days before Tagovailoa’s first diagnosed concussion, he was pushed to the ground against the Bills and his head snapped back as he fell back, slamming into the ground. Upon returning to his feet, he stumbled and grabbed at his head, but was labeled to have a back injury. The incident led to an investigation by the NFL and players union, which later changed its protocol to include language that would have ruled Tagovailoa out for the remainder of the Bills game — and likely would have kept him out of the Bengals game on a short week.

“We were able to kind of relive the scenario in how I got tackled, how I fell, Tagovailoa said. “And it wasn’t just one particular game. It was multiple ways that I got taken down and how I could have prevented that.”

‘Strategic falling’

Martial arts and similar activities have long carried parallels to football. Chung, who is not trained in jiu-jitsu but has followed the discipline, started off working with defensive linemen, teaching moves that apply to specific football acts, like hand placement. He transitioned to the offensive line to teach counters. This eventually extended to wide receivers and defensive backs, explaining moves that mirrored press coverage tactics.

“By the end of my career, I was literally teaching almost every position on the team a certain skill set that was a derivative of martial arts,” Chung said.

During practice, outside linebackers Jaelan Phillips and Bradley Chubb can often be seen engaging in hand combat drills that mimic engaging with an offensive lineman.

Tagovailoa said that during his weekly jiu-jitsu training, he learned grappling techniques among other things, but the focus of his work was learning to fall in a safe manner.

“We used crash pads to land on first with trying to fall,” he said. “Obviously, tucking your chin, that was one of the deals. But it went a lot more into the technique of how to disperse your energy when you fall, kind of like the posture you want to be in, and if you’re not presented that posture, what are other things that you can do to help you disperse the energy when you fall. So it’s a lot of those things. And it’s actually a lot cooler than you think when you hear of learning how to fall.”

Libório said the way in which Tagovailoa tucks his chin and keeps his head close to his chest when he falls could go a long way to preventing devastating impacts on the ground. And there are myriad ways to break a fall from various angles and leverages, he said, including extending your arms instead of bracing with your hands or wrists.

“It’s a skill and it’s learnable,” Libório said.

In Australia, where rugby is the predominant sport, martial arts has had a leading role in helping athletes. For the past 13 years, jiu-jiitsu and mixed martial arts coach Alex Prates has been training athletes in the National Rugby League with jiu-jitsu techniques. In an interview, he said he helps players learn proper ways to deliver blows — and receive them.

His main objective is to “make the contact safe,” which can seem like an oxymoron in a sport as physical as football. But the little nuances can be the difference in a player getting up after a big hit or being sidelined for important games.

McDaniel said former Dolphin Teddy Bridgewater noted how quarterback is the only position on offense or defense that doesn’t have a ramp-up to physical contact in the offseason or training camp. Players go through practices with a red, noncontact jersey for several months. And with more and more teams opting against playing their starters in the preseason, Week 1 is often the first time quarterbacks take hits.

Tagovailoa said he will continue his training weekly and many of the techniques have been brought to the Dolphins’ quarterback room. With the implementation of jiu-jitsu, the quarterbacks have been able to simulate hits in game-like situations well before the regular season begins on the road against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sept. 10.

“It’s a lot of strategic falling that is patterned after things that happened to our quarterbacks during the season,” McDaniel said.

Tagovailoa has already seemed to reap the benefits of his training. He recounted executing a backward somersault during offseason workouts after he was accidentally hit by a teammate in front of him.

He played in his first game in almost nine months against the Houston Texans on Aug. 19 and appeared to execute a pair of break-falling techniques. On one occasion, he kept his chin tucked as he was tackled backward by a defensive lineman. On another, he spread his arms to break his fall after a defender pushed an offensive lineman into his lap.

Tagovailoa said it still might be a year or two until his training becomes second nature. But that he’s already been able to translate it into a game months after starting is promising for the Dolphins’ most indispensable player.

A pivotal season

The Dolphins enter what could be a pivotal and rewarding season for not only the organization but Tagovailoa himself.

Miami exercised Tagovailoa’s fifth-year option early in the offseason, keeping him under contract through the 2024 season. But the long-term commitment that draftmates Jalen Hurts and Justin Herbert got hasn’t been given to Tagovailoa yet. Dolphins decision-makers have been as vocal in their belief in Tagovailoa as they have ever been — and they’ve said they’ve been reassured that he isn’t any more prone to concussions than anyone else.

But the move to pick up his option and shelf extension talks was viewed as a kind of wait-and-see approach for a quarterback who has yet to play an entire season in his nascent career. More than ever before, Tagovailoa’s ability to stay healthy hovers over a franchise that will enter the 2023 season with realistic expectations of competing for the AFC East title and more.

“We understand that freaky things can happen,” Tagovailoa said. “It’s football. It’s a physical sport. Not everything that you prepare for is what you’re going to get. So, I did the best that I could to get myself ready and prepped for this season as far as injuries go.”