Ryan Fitzpatrick not thrilled with concussion-check delay

[The Dolphin]

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In case you haven’t heard, Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard. Clearly he is pro-brain.

But the Dolphins quarterback was not happy with the way the NFL’s game officials handled him yesterday, causing him to miss time in the fourth quarter.

Fitzpatrick took a helmet-to-helmet hit from Colts defensive tackle Grover Stewart, and went to the bench at the end of that drive. But it wasn’t until an interception gave the Dolphins the ball back several minutes later that the officials sent him to the medical tent for his test.

“As a guy who’s played this game a long time, I understand why they have the spotters and why they call down,” Fitzpatrick said, via Adam Beasley of the Miami Herald. “That’s for us, to protect us. For me, it was frustrating because I was on the bench for five minutes. We were off the field. I sat on the bench for five minutes, going over plays. It wasn’t until I went back into the game that it was called down to check on me.

“If they want to check on me, I get it 100 percent and I know what it’s in place. It was a five-minute gap there where I was sitting there doing nothing and they didn’t need me out on the field where I could have been checked. And then also I sat in the blue tent for what seemed like 10 minutes — it was probably one minute — without anybody checking me in a very key moment of the game. That was difficult. . . . The timing of it was off, and it was difficult for me to understand.”

Josh Rosen replaced him for the series, and they ran the ball three straight plays before kicking a field goal.

Better safe than sorry is probably the appropriate approach in cases such as these, but Fitzpatrick’s concerns about the mechanics are valid, and should be explained.