Josh Allen and Tua, Concussions, and Hard Goals

Welcome back to the Moon Stamp Sports blog – a platform similar to the $5 on Coinbase; we all kind of forgot about it. But it seems I have forgotten it the most. I’ve wanted to write something about some dumb sports take I thought up while on my way to work. As the pod has expanded, my ability to create has diminished.

Realistically I should have written something dumb – like my Manning-league take. Or use the Texans’ offensive line woes to create a listicle of more stable beings than a Texans O-Line (I had literally already written this about the Giants last season).

But, after Josh Allen went down with a Tua-like spasm, only to return on the next offensive drive, a narrative began again. A narrative about concussions and goals. Sure, that may have happened weeks ago, but it’s played prominently in my mind since then. This blog has been in development for a while and has been forced to go through many different iterations.

Like most everyone else on the internet (and pundit-class and real life), when I saw Tua go down last season, I decided I had seen enough. There was more to life, and it was time for him to retire and realize there were so many more years left outside of football. It is the most logical reasoning, right? Realize that head injuries not only decrease the life expectancy but decrease overall enjoyment as those concussions come back in force in 15-20 years. It is the Walter Payton story.

As I reflected, though, I came to a more contrarian conclusion. Not even contrarian nor a conclusion. More of an understanding. The goal of Josh Allen and Tua is not to survive – it is to achieve. And head injuries be damned.

Remarkability and Goals

I have this obsession with thinking of medieval peasants who were killed in raids. It sounds incredibly weird, and there is no realistic way for me to normally defend this thought process. But I am enthralled with this idea of faceless/nameless peasants who live in a town most likely forgotten by time being killed by nameless/faceless men whose motive they will never know. An unremarkable life rounded out by an unremarkable death. Maybe it sounds harsh, but it’s how their life began and ended. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the standard for most human beings.

You live and you die, and a second death occurs 15 years after your own. It’s something I’m still struggling to accept.

But for someone like a Josh Allen or a Tua Tagovailoa remarkability is their standard. The entire life of an NFL quarterback is a remarkability. They begin in youth football, only to be lauded throughout their middle and high school football careers. To be recruited to play college and drafted and given a place among American athletic royalty. Maybe Josh Allen had to work a bit harder for that end goal, but let’s not pretend he was slumming it up at Wyoming.

And in all of that there is one goal – win. Win against other quarterbacks. Win against other teams. Win the Super Bowl. Everything that those two quarterbacks have ever worked for is on that field. The goal of their life is not to be a good father or a good son or a good person (they may be all those things). The goal of their life is to achieve the highest pinnacle. As much as we want to confine them to our ideas of life, of our restricted goals, we just cannot.

And this isn’t to hold these men to a god-like status. I’m not trying to explain away their actions. I’m trying to empathize when Tua laughs away the Guardian Cap or Josh Allen gets back on the horse immediately. This is not a failure to understand the greater things in life. It is the fact that the greater thing is right in front of them. A couple of things fall their way and they’re enshrined in immortality. All those years of being told they’re remarkable, to the point they can actually picture the Lombardi Trophy in their hands, to the point they can see themselves in Canton, “wasted” if they walk away.

In a way, it’s the sunk cost.

Andrew Luck is not the standard; he is the anomaly. He understood that his remarkable goals were unachievable because life was becoming unsustainable. He walked away because the confluence of real life and football life were incompatible.

But I cannot sit here and think it’s crazy that someone who has devoted their entire life to finishing the race really wants to finish the race. In their mind, they must be remarkable because their goals demand so.

To Die on the Field

When Josh Allen went down against the Texans, the Bills staff employed smelling salts to wake him up and get him back in the game. His medical needs were rounded out by the needs of the team. Maybe I shouldn’t expect more from a team led by a man whose heroes include Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers.

I kind of hate the saying that you die two deaths – one physically and one when someone says your name for the last time. It reeks of “I’m 13 and this is deep”. But it’s also incredibly correct. In that vein, it is possible to live forever. In 100 years there’s a chance no one remembers who I am; all these writings have been eaten by the overwhelming ocean of content on the internet. Alexander will live forever. Caesar lives forever. Napoleon lives forever. But those are the exceptions, not the rules.

Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but Tom Brady probably won’t live forever. The annals of history will someday forget about football and the greatest player (for now). But he will live longer than most people. His Super Bowl victories are enshrined on YouTube; his Falcons triumph is a colloquialism for comebacks. Tom Brady will die much later than his body does.

Tom Brady will effectively die on the field. In 200 years when so much has faded, Tom Brady the quarterback will be remembered. Tom Brady the commentator or Tom Brady the father will be fully gone. To die on the field is not in the Will Compton way. To die on the field is to have your victories live on.

I hate to also invoke Sisyphus, another portion of “I’m 13 and this is deep”, but we, as observers, do not have to imagine these two happy. Or any other quarterback for that. They are happy. They’re not all winning Super Bowls every year – stolen by that Kermit-man. But there is something about living your dream so fully and so well that you could plausibly never work again once the dream ends. And they all are okay

To die on the field is not to physically die on the field. It is to leave everything on the field, such that, the last memories humans have of you is on the football field. Your name is forever enshrined on the roster; the clips forever with you staring back. And to have that honor, an honor you have worked for since a child, then it’s all worth it. The sacrifices, the hours lost, the years lost later, and everything that comes with that – including the harrowing injuries – is worth it for a taste of that achievement. To be marked as a superstar athlete. The boulder is already at the top; we just don’t see it.

Josh and Tua – The Curse of Being Known

I’m sitting here trying to write this blog outside, but am currently fascinated by a bug.

I’m not sure what kind of bug it is; it looks like an ant but flies like a mosquito and uses its hands/front limbs (?) like a praying mantis. Unsurprisingly, I am not a bug expert in any sense. I observe the ones I know and run from the ones I don’t (I always assume they will fuck up my nervous system or make me allergic to meat).

Realistically, this is the bug’s only day alive. Bugs don’t live long; the tinier they are the shorter they live. The crumbs the bug was eating on the table are some of the very forms of sustenance it will ever have. And during that brief moment I was a witness. In some ways I should be honored to have witnessed this brief foray into human-created joy this big got to witness.

But, to me, it’s Thursday afternoon. I’ll remember the bug. I even have visual evidence of the bug’s existence. But the bug will only exist in memory, and the actions I saw it perform are probably the only memory of it that will survive. When it left my presence, it, in a way, died.

The bug doesn’t know of my existence. Maybe it understands what I am or what I’m doing. Or, more likely, I am just a being it is avoiding. For Josh and Tua, they are bugs. And we, the collective, are me. We are watching them from afar as they try to live their last day.

I know I am overthinking and over-writing this; my ego is such that I believe I can outthink the audience. It’s not good. In some ways, it’s like Tua and Josh. These men, these quarterbacks, are okay with the repercussions of their actions.

And I don’t know if I can criticize them for that. Because I understand.

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