‘Valentine’s Views:’ Tua Tagovailoa injury, Myles Garrett, more

Here are a few things I’m thinking about as we roll through an NFL weekend without a New York Giants game.

The Tua Tagovailoa injury

First off, let’s hope that young man is eventually able to have the fantastic and profitable NFL career it looked like he was headed toward until he crashed to the ground with a devastating hip injury on Saturday afternoon.

Former NFL team physician Dr. David Chao said on Sirius XM that the injury is “career threatening, but let’s not go career ending, yet.”

There were immediate comparisons to Bo Jackson, who suffered a hip injury that ended his football career and led to a hip replacement. Doctors said Saturday night that Tagovailoa is “expected to make a full recovery.”

What that means exactly is anyone’s guess.

For me, one of the things it points out is the silliness of the “Tank For Tua” or “Tank for ...” stuff we always hear from NFL fans. You never know what can happen on the football field or in life. Deciding a year or more in advance that a franchise can’t live without a certain college player is just nonsense. You do the best you can to win the games you play, and then in the offseason whatever you can to add the best possible players.

A Giants-related thought is that this scrambles the top of the draft board and — depending on what pick they ultimately end up with — might take a top position player off the board before the Giants get to select.

The suspension of Myles Garrett

The NFL absolutely did the right thing in suspending Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns for the remainder of the season after Garrett ripped Mason Rudolph’s helmet off on Thursday night and bashed him in the head with it.

It’s amazing to me that some people don’t understand just how violent — and vile — an act that was. An NFL helmet weighs roughly 6 pounds. Think about the damage you could do to someone by smashing them in the head with a 6-pound sledgehammer, or one of those 5-pound weights you probably have laying around your home.

I don’t care what anyone thinks of whether or not Rudolph overreacted to the initial hit he took. What followed can never happen. Personally, I hope Garrett’s suspension lasts at least a few games into next season.

Photographer injured

I don’t watch a ton of regular season college football, but I was watching the Auburn-Georgia game on Saturday when a photographer was violently run over on the sideline. Fortunately, Chamberlain Smith wasn’t injured as severely as it looked like she might have been. She was reportedly released from a hospital on Saturday evening.

We see sideline collisions between players and photographers, videographers and other personnel all the time. Giants coach Pat Shurmur complained not long ago when Daniel Jones ran into a man with a boom microphone.

“I don’t know what you do about that. Those guys have to be a little fitter and get the heck out of the way,” Shurmur said.

Well, Smith is young and fit. She was, though, stationary on the ground doing her job and had no chance.

Like Shurmur, I don’t know what you do about things like this. There are, though, entirely too many people on the sidelines of NFL and big-time college football games. There are hundreds of people within 10 or so yards of the playing field on each sideline. Practically every inch is occupied. I don’t know how you limit it, especially since so many of the people there are either NFL employees or television crew members but there should be discussions about sideline safety.

It’s a dangerous place. For everyone.