Down 49-16 in the third quarter, star quarterback and redshirt junior Jacoby Brissett took a devastating shot to the ribs, leaving him slow to get up.

Brissett, the player who has nearly single-handedly carried the NC State offense at times, returned to the game after taking this hit and played meaningless minutes in a game already out of reach. 

“He got hit in the ribs early in the game and he got the wind knocked out of him on the play,” NC State head coach Dave Doeren said. “But, when he got over there and caught his wind he wasn’t as beat up as he originally thought.”

Brissett, who was checked for a punctured lung on the sideline after the hit, had taken many big hits during the contest, due both to the Yellow Jackets’ fierce pass rush and a high number of designed quarterback runs. In a game that was past the point of a respectable loss, every person in the stadium in Wolfpack red, and even some in Georgia Tech gold, had to wonder what benefits existed by keeping Brissett under center.

“I would have taken him out if I wanted to take him out, and at that point of the game he wanted to stay in, and our guys were continuing to play hard trying to get a score,” Doeren said. “We have pride in our team; we don’t just want to put a guy in there and not get anything done.”

The Michigan Wolverines had a similar instance earlier in the season, when quarterback Shane Morris was sent back into a game that he was taken out of due to concussion symptoms. The young quarterback then collapsed on the field due to his severe injury and head coach Brady Hoke, who was responsible for sending Morris back into the game, has since come under fire for his decision that put a possible win ahead of his player’s safety. 

The president of the University of Michigan has since criticized the handling of Morris’s concussion, and while the situations are no doubt different, both deal with a coaching decision that risked a player’s health, albeit Morris’ injury was far more serious.

With that said, Doeren had to know that this game was a lost cause, and with two games coming up against conference  teams, Wake Forest and UNC-Chapel Hill, teams that both beat NC State last year and teams that the Pack has to beat to become bowl eligible, he had to know how costly losing his starting quarterback would be. Yet the idea of a magical comeback proved to be too much to pull the redshirt junior.

“Early on, things were going the way we thought they would,” Doeren said. “It was a back-and-forth game. We thought it was going to be that way and we would go score for score, but things backfired with the two turnovers.”

An injury to Brissett could have been the difference between going into next season on a three-game win streak and a bowl victory, and Doeren being on the hot seat at the season’s end. With only one win in the Atlantic Coast Conference in two years, the need to beat the Demon Deacons and the Tar Heels has to outweigh keeping Brissett in the game just to put one more score on the board.

Brissett also has to shoulder some of the blame for the questionable decision to stay in the game. Doeren asked the talented quarterback if he wanted to go back into the game and he replied like any coach would want his player to, by saying he wanted to play every snap. 

This would have been a motivational statement if there was absolutely any hope for State to mount a comeback; in reality, there was not, and this decision forces a pressing question: Can athletes be expected to make rational decisions when their reputations depend on putting personal health to the side?

“To understand that we do have another game next week and we need to win,” Brissett said. “I was just honestly still thinking that there was time on the clock so we can still have a chance to come back and win.”

Luckily, Brissett was able to make it through the game without further injury and even added another touchdown in the fourth quarter, but the decision was obviously a gamble, one that just happened to turn out in the Wolfpack’s, and Doeren’s, favor. A 56-23 loss is a blowout only marginally smaller than 56-16, and considering the weight of the two upcoming games and the health of the athlete, in hindsight it’s tough to say whether keeping him in was the smartest choice.