The Saga of Ted Johnson: Sports Medicine with a Bitter Taste

February 5th, 2007 by

Ted Johnson was a linebacker for the New England Patriots. His specialty was stopping the run. As any viewer of the recent NFL playoffs knows, run stoppers use their heads: first, to think strategically — where to go in the course of a given play – but then literally: torpedoing head first into the body of an opposing player. That’s how you “stop the run.” The result? All too often what football practitioners call “dings” and what the rest of us call concussions.
Ted Johnson has three superbowl rings, a broken marriage, a life in tatters and, it appears, a broken brain. At age 34, he has incipient Alzheimers. His persistent depression has led him to abuse medications. The brain damage he suffered in football appears to be permanent, placing him on an inexorable downward path (see our recent blog on permanent brain damage and depression among football players here).
Johnson thinks he knows exactly when the brain damage occurred. In 2002, he suffered a concussion in a game. In middle of the following week, he was given a “no contact” jersey for practice, which legendary coach Bill Belichick converted for unknown reasons to “full contact.” In a subsequent drill, Johnson suffered another concussion. He eventually returned to full action, again, suffering countless “dings” over the course of three more seasons in the NFL. We may never know whether the two successive incidents were the cause of his current problems, but there is little question that he has suffered permanent brain damage.
All of which brings us to the issue of sports medicine and the concept of returning to work as quickly as possible.
Modified Duty in the Working World
Workers comp practitioners understand that injured workers recover quicker if they are able to return to the workplace and perform some or all of their pre-injury duties. Treating doctors determine what the employee can and cannot do. Employers match the restrictions with available work. For some employees with extensive restrictions, that might mean performing job functions totally unrelated to the original job. Any work can be performed, as long as it is valuable to the employer and within the capacities of the recovering employee. The important part of modified duty is getting dressed and going to work: the worker feels productive and feels like part of the team.
The whole system falls apart if two conditions are not met: the doctor must accurately specify the restrictions necessitated by the injury, along with appropriate time frames; and the employer must make sure that the employee follows those restrictions carefully, never exceeding the doctor’s limits. If any ambiguity or doubt arises, the employer communicates with the doctor to clarify which work activities are acceptable and which are not.
Modified Duty in the NFL?
Now let’s return to the violent world of the NFL. There is a lot of money at stake. The pressure to win from week to week is intense. Indeed, winning is the only way the entire league measures performance. As Vince Lombardi said, “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”
With all this focus on winning, it’s not surprising that the league itself does not know how to handle concussions. There is no explicit protocal for treatment and no required period for “time away from work.” (With high profile cases of brain damage such as Johnson’s, maybe that will change.) At the same time, there really is no “light duty” available for injured players. Whenever a player takes the field, it’s all full duty – full duty with a vengeance. The opposing side shows no mercy. If they can exploit the injury to their advantage, they will do it. Players whose injuries prevent them from returning to the playing field indefinitely are placed on “injured reserve.” Once on this dreaded list, they are ineligible for the remainder of the season.
In Ted Johnson’s case, the doctor apparently restricted his activity for a few days following the initial concussion. The trainer set him up for limited duty. For reasons that may never be clear, the coach ordered him to participate in full contact drills. Johnson did not object. As one teammate said of him, “Teddy was one of those guys who…played by the code. He played hurt. He played tough, he played physical and he never let his teammates down. He was there for you every play.’’ Despite all of his recent problems, despite his bitterness directed at his former coach, he talked about returning to the Patriots as an active player just a few months ago.
Ted Johnson has become a symbol of all that is ambiguous about professional football. His precipitous demise reminds us that sports medicine analogies have their limits. The pressures of our working world – the need to get valued employees back to “full duty” as quickly as possible – must always be tempered by the needs of the worker and the time frame of the healing process itself. Life, fortunately, is not a football game. We have many ways to measure success and accomplishment, only one of which involves the final score.