BEREA, Ohio — Cleveland Browns coach Pat Shurmur strongly defended his team’s handling of Colt McCoy after the quarterback suffered a concussion during Thursday night’s 14-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Scrambling from pressure, McCoy was laid out by a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit from Steelers linebacker James Harrison late in the fourth quarter. McCoy left the game for just two plays but returned after being examined and cleared by the Browns’ medical staff, which Shurmur said followed the NFL’s exacting guidelines on concussions.
McCoy didn’t begin showing symptoms of a concussion until after the game, Shurmur said.
“If he had shown symptoms of the concussion, I wouldn’t have put him back in the game,” Shurmur said. “That was a tough, physical game. Everybody got knocked around. If he had the symptoms, he wouldn’t have gone back in — absolutely not.”
After McCoy was blasted by Harrison, the quarterback told trainers he injured his left hand. McCoy was briefly checked on the field before he was taken to Cleveland’s bench, where Shurmur said medical personnel performed mandatory “return-to-play” tests adopted by the league in 2009.
McCoy then approached his coach, who had put in backup Seneca Wallace as the Browns were driving to a possible go-ahead touchdown. “He said, ‘Hey, I’m ready to go,’ ” Shurmur said. “And I was ready to go.”
On his third play after returning, McCoy, whose head was snapped back on the crushing blow from Harrison, threw a costly interception in the end zone. McCoy was only on the sideline for a few minutes — 80 seconds in game time, 3:50 of real time.
“He never should’ve gone back in the game,” Brad McCoy said of his son. “He was basically out (cold) after the hit. You could tell by the rigidity of his body as he was lying there. There were a lot of easy symptoms that should’ve told them he had a concussion.”
