They need to have their heads examined

If this was a prize fight, they would have stopped it.

It would have been one of those classic scenes you see, with the referee waving his arms in front of a punch-drunk boxer trying desperately to regain his equilibrium.

Unfortunately, Stewart Bradley is not a prize fighter. He plays football, as middle linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Increasingly, the National Football League and the players who make millions by violently colliding with each other on Sunday afternoons are looking into the after-effects of all these head-on collisions. In particular they are concerned about concussions.

So it was more than a little worrisome to see what happened to Bradley last Sunday. It was one of those especially troublesome collisions, one in which Bradley and others was most vulnerable. Football players have a way of bracing themselves for hits, almost a way to absorb the shock.
It’s the ones they don’t see coming that cause problems. That’s what happened to Bradley. He was closing on a Packers’ ball carrier when his head and neck unexpectedly met a teammate’s leg.

What happened next was hard to watch. A clearly dazed Bradley lay prone on the Lincoln Financial Field turf for a few seconds, then attempted to gather himself, get up and head back to the huddle. He made it to his feet, but not the huddle.

Looking very much like a boxer who had just been sent to the canvas, Bradley got to his feet, only to stagger several steps and then fall to the ground again.

At that point, other players on the field started waving frantically toward the Eagles’ bench, where medical personnel were already dealing with quarterback Kevin Kolb, who was suffering concussion symptoms of his own.

Bradley eventually was helped to the sidelines. You would think his day would be done, especially since the league was now starting to take a much more cautious approach to such concussion incidents.

You would be wrong. Bradley missed a few plays, then returned to the field of play. He didn’t last long. After a few plays, he again retreated to the sidelines.

It was the same story with Kolb, who re-entered the game only to quickly exit, still not feeling quite right.

No kidding.

The Eagles say both players passed the necessary tests on the sidelines to allow them to go back into the game.

If that’s the case, they need to take another look at their evaluation process. Anyone who witnessed the Bradley incident must have been dumb-struck at seeing him back on the field a few plays later.

The NFL is beginning to come to grips with something the NHL has been dealing with now for years.

The violent hits that lie at the core of their sports’ popularity come at a very high personal toll.

Does the name Eric Lindros ring a bell? It should. In Philadelpia, he is the poster boy for concussion syndromes, a Hall of Fame career short-circuitted by what is all too casually referred to as “getting your bell rung.”

The Eagles and the NFL need to ring the bell in updating their standards, and assuring players suffering from concussion-like syndromes do not put themselves in danger of more serious injury.

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