FMIA Week 5: Giants Keep Defying Expectations; How Seattle’s Geno Smith Strategy is Paying Off; Taysom Hill Does It All

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

That we had two events in Sunday’s NFL games—a player being removed because an injury spotter thought he saw him wobbly/shaky after a hit, and a hugely ticky-tack roughing-the-passer call—that really weren’t connected but seem connected by the jittery approach to concussions and player safety that has exploded in the last two weeks.

Could the spotter and the ref who made the phantom roughing call both have been erring on the side of extreme caution? That’s sure how it looked to me.

“I thought of it too,” former NFL VP of officiating Dean Blandino said Sunday night. “Are we being overly sensitive because of the Tua Tagovailoa situation?”

The line of the night came from a longtime NFL executive. “What’s that thing you guys in the media do every week after the games?” he said. “Overreaction Monday? As a league, I think today was Overreaction Sunday.”

I still don’t know the real story of Miami quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s removal from the Dolphins’ game at the Jets after one offensive snap. In the irony of ironies, Bridgewater, Tagovailoa’s backup, was tackled hard on Miami’s first play and left the game for the locker room. He never returned. We were told the injury spotter in the press box saw in Bridgewater some ataxia; the QB was somehow unstable, per the spotter. In accord with the 20-hour-old NFL rule about motor instability—the rule that came into effect at 5 p.m. ET Saturday—Bridgewater was ruled out for the game. Maybe Bridgewater did stumble, but we never saw it. The Dolphins never saw it. CBS replays never showed it. ESPN reported he passed all concussion tests, but it didn’t matter. Bridgewater, after one snap, was finished.

And then, with three minutes left in a 21-15 game