Some good news on Austin Ekeler: he told Grant & Danny on Tuesday that ‘I’ve been getting back to feeling like myself,’ so hopefully, the worst of his concussion suffered two weeks ago is behind him.
“Definitely went through it there for a little bit, just with the concussion symptoms and trying to just get through the fogginess feeling, but definitely trending in the right direction,” Ekeler told G&D as he returned to his weekly visits. “Now just still dealing with some repercussions of the hit, but trending in the right direction.”
Which is good, given what he said next.
“I think it’s important to kind of diagnose the magnitude of the situation – like, I didn't even remember how I got off the field. I remember kind of coming to, but I had some short-term memory loss, and all I remember was my wife was sitting in the room and I was getting evaluated by our medical staff in the back room,” Ekeler said. “That’s when I started to remember things, and then I was getting in the back of the ambulance to go get a CT scan. I can pretty much remember everything from that point, but it just shows you the severity of things. I was definitely concussed and seeing some major symptoms there.”
This was Ekeler’s second concussion of the season, and he remembered that he didn’t remember how he got off the field in Cincinnati when he suffered that one, either; however, it was more the pains he still has in his neck that led to being placed on IR, which, with the bye, gives him a little over a month to get right and get a break as he preps to come back for the playoff push.
“It was like, let’s not rush you back, let's kind of put you in a place where you can do the right thing, treat yourself, make sure you're 100 percent and not mess around with coming back too early,” Ekeler said. “No pressure to come back really early because I’m on IR, so kind of where I'm at right now is to just continue to go in every single day and get treatment, which is a lot of just mobility, a lot of strengthening, a lot of just different memory things, eye tracking. There's a lot of stuff that goes into just recovering from a concussion, and that's what I'm going through right now.”
Ekeler isn’t fully symptom-free and hasn’t passed the league’s concussion protocol yet, but he’s ‘getting there,’ and has a few weeks now to do it, but here's the big question: he can’t return until Week 18…but will he, or is he done for the year given the severity of the concussion and the aftermath?
“It’s week-to-week man; it’s one of those things I want to continue to learn more about,” Ekeler said. “It’s my second concussion, am I more susceptible for a third one now that I’ve had two and the severity of mine? So it's a learning process for me, because I've never had anything like this this bad, and twice in the same year. It’s one of those things where I’m human and I don't know everything about my conditions right now; I have some new ones that I'm dealing with, and one of those things where you just got to continue to learn and then try to make the best judgment.”
Whatever happens, though, the team is behind him 100 percent.
“The best thing about it is the team's got my back, pretty much on any decision that I make,” Ekeler said. “And so I really appreciate DQ and Adam Peters for being there and kind of being, you know, open to helping me out.”
You can listen to his entire visit above to get his thoughts on both the loss to Dallas and win over Tennessee, and much more!