Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon has absolved coach Brady Hoke of any wrongdoing in regards to the handling of quarterback Shane Morris, who suffered both a leg and head injury during the game.
Brandon, who was doing one of his first media interviews since last Saturday’s game, told the Detroit Free Press that the responsibility of diagnosing Morris with any injury that would have prohibited him from staying in the game should have come from the medical training staff.
"I don't think Brady deserves any blame for what happened on the sidelines," Brandon said. "Because Brady is responsible for coaching.
"Our medical staff, which incorporates all of our trainers, our physicians -- it's a rather large complement of people down there -- their job is to notify the coaches if a situation occurs where either somebody needs to come off the field or somebody cannot go back on the field."
Morris took a helmet-to-helmet hit during the fourth quarter against Minnesota and emerged wobbly. He has already been hampered by a leg injury. Despite teammates asking for the training staff to come onto the field and look at Morris, Morris waived them off and he stay in the game one more play before coming off the field. A few plays later, after backup Devin Gardner lost his helmet on an out-of-bounds play, Morris returned to the game to take a handoff.
Morris was later diagnosed with symptoms consistent with a concussion.
When Brandon was asked whether what happened with Morris would affect Hoke’s job status Brandon replied: "No. I just said the problem on the sideline Saturday had nothing to do with the coaches."
Hoke has faced staunch criticism in the past week for the way Morris’ injury was handled but he’s been consistent in saying that he was not responsible for deciding whether Morris should have remained on the field. However, when Morris collapsed into the arms of his offensive lineman, a moment that was caught on camera, someone on the sideline should have had the common sense to pull Morris out of the game despite his insistence that he stay in.
In response to the handling of Morris’ injuries, Michigan announced Thursday that it was putting a member of the athletic training staff in the press box to better spot injuries. The athletic training staff also will use two-way radios to communicate with each other rather than hand signals. The medical staff also will secure the helmets of any player that is deemed unfit to return to the game — a practice most programs have been employing for several years.
Brandon told the Free Press that it was an internal communication error that led to the mishandling of Morris injuries.
"Part of the problem here that we own, that we're apologizing for is a lack of internal communication," Brandon said. "That's part of the problem. There's a lot of voices, a lot of moving parts, a lot of people involved, a lot of people who had opinions and perspectives on what happened and we did a horrible job of gathering all that together and getting everybody on the same page. That's one of the things we have to apologize for, own up to and fix."
For more Michigan news, visit TheWolverine.com.
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