Linking Laconically Gets On the Soapbox

"There was never a concussion procedure that we went through," Kelly said. "He actually had some swelling on his face Sunday from a hit that he took. When he hit the ground, a helmet hit him. That's really what caused it. It was really more of a hit to the face."

As for the blurred vision Crist had at the time, Kelly said it isn’t an issue for this week.

"It went away, or we wouldn't have put him back in the game," he said. "It went away within an hour or so, and (he) has not had any headaches or anything that would cause our medical staff any concern."

There's also this Kelly quote, courtesy of mgoblog:

"We had just got clearance from the TV tout to take the field. We were under a minute. That's when he said, 'Coach, I just don't remember this play.' You could look at him and you could tell that he wasn't fully in charge. So that's when we made the decision to make the change."

So, Crist took a hit to the face from a helmet, his vision became blurred, he couldn't remember things that happened barely minutes beforehand . . . and there wasn't "anything that would cause our medical staff any concern"?  Really??  Crist may have suffered a concussion, and he may not have.  But given the growing and ever-more-ominous body of research and actual human cases on the issue of concussions in football players, wouldn't the reasonable course of action here have been to err on the side of caution and, you know, give a guy who "wasn't fully in charge" the rest of the afternoon off -- the game be damned?

It's crazy, and I really can't believe that Kelly's essentially getting a free pass from the media on this one.