The Dallas Cowboys suffered a crushing 44-30 loss to the Detroit Lions on Thursday Night Football, a defeat that drives a dagger through the heart of their playoff hopes. But the Cowboys came away from the game with an even more troubling loss.
Early in the third quarter, All-Pro wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, the Cowboys’ 2020 first-round draft pick out of Oklahoma, appeared to strike his head on the turf as he crashed down from attempting a leaping catch.
As ESPN.com reporter Todd Archer wrote, describing what happened next, “He made a fencing response with his arms extended, and (quarterback Dak) Prescott immediately ran to make sure he was OK. He went to the medical tent for further examination and was ruled out of the game.”
The “fencing response” is when the victim of a blow to the head involuntarily extends his arms in front of him.
According to information from the Mid-Atlantic Concussion Alliance, “The fencing response position is common after someone has experienced an acceleration/deceleration injury of the brain as this soft brain tissue slams into the hard skull and this bruising of the higher functioning cerebrum (aka gray matter) temporarily shuts down its function and lets the primitive brain stem temporarily take over.”
That sounds bad. And it is.
The question now for Lamb — in the first season of his four-year, $156 million contract extension — and the Cowboys will be: How serious is the 26-year-old receiver’s concussion? And how many games can he be expected to miss?
Concussion Expert Calls Lamb Injury ‘Ugly’
Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation — also a former professional wrestler and Ivy League football player — reacted with alarm to the Lamb head injury.
“Lamb suffered an ugly brain injury on this play,” Nowinski wrote on his social media account. “Note Tua-like fingers, an unsettling version of the fencing response which reveals injury to brainstem nuclei. Sad fact: brainstem damage can increase the risk of mental health and psychiatric disorders.”
The concussion expert was referring to Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who suffered a series of at least three concussions from 2022 to 2024.
Describing an injury suffered by the Miami signal-caller in a September 12, 2024, game against the Buffalo Bills, ESPN.com reporter Elizabeth Merrill wrote, “There was Tagovailoa, lying on the ground with his arms outstretched and his fingers curled into the fencing response, an involuntary position that occurs after a brain injury.”
Concussion is Lamb’s Third
The concussion he suffered on Thursday night was the third on record for Lamb, but his have been more spread out in time than those endured by Tagovailoa. As a pro, Lamb was concussed in a November 21, 2021, game against the Kansas City Chiefs. The brain injury caused him to miss one game.
According Injury Experts, a site that collects injury data on NFL players, and posted by Florida-based sports medicine physician Dr. Jesse Morse, Lamb was also diagnosed with a concussion on October 1, 2019.
That would be three days after the Oklahoma Sooners 55-16 win over Texas Tech, but Lamb did not sit out a game after that injury.
Longer Recovery From Repeated Concussions
Multiple concussions increase recovery times and also carry heightened risk of “long-term health problems, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a neurodegenerative disorder that is associated with changes in mood, behavior and cognition,” according to an NBC News report.
Because the Cowboys do not play again until December 14, giving Lamb three extra days to recover, it remains possible he could clear the NFL’s concussion protocol and be able to play by then. Studies have yet to find that concussions accompanied by fencing response take any longer to clear than those without the response.
But Lamb’s history of multiple concussions is more likely to cause him to miss at least one game, even with the extra recovery time.
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