NFL Commissioner: Gisele Wrong About Tom Brady Playing With Concussion
Gisele Bundchen started a firestorm last week when she revealed on CBS This Morning that her husband Tom Brady suffered a concussion last season. Brady missed the opening four games of the 2016 season as a result of his Deflategate suspension, but he didn’t miss a game the rest of the way and the New England Patriots never listed him with a concussion. In fact, according to USA Today, Brady has not been on the team’s injury report for a concussion at any point in the last four seasons. And yet, Bundchen told the network that he “has concussions pretty much every…I mean we don’t talk about it. But he has concussions and I don’t really think it’s a healthy thing for your body to go through.”
Because the NFL has a long history of not dealing with concussions the right way, Bundchen’s revelation quickly made news everywhere. A number of NFL players have since come forward saying they have even hidden concussions from team doctors and their spouses in the past for a variety of reasons. Many believe the former is what happened to Brady since his agent Don Yee told ESPN that Brady was “not diagnosed with a concussion last year.” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell also spoke on the matter earlier this week, doubling down on Yee’s statement and saying the NFL is doing everything possible to improve its concussion protocols.
“[Brady] has not been diagnosed with a concussion or was not last season,” Goodell said. “This is something that’s an ongoing issue for us. We want to make sure that the proper medical care is given to every player. The responsibility is a shared responsibility for our teams, our medical professionals, the players themselves. We put in a lot of safeguards that I think are incredibly important in changing the culture, and I think that’s what we’ve done. But I think there’s still more work to be done, we’ll continue to do that.”
Brady himself has yet to comment on whether or not he actually had a concussion last season and whether or not he hid it from the team.