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The Colts insisted they followed the proper protocols in dealing with quarterback Jacoby Brissett‘s concussion.

Then again, Colts owner Jim Irsay said Andrew Luck was going to be fine to play this year, so it’s reasonable to not give them the same benefit of the doubt as we may have in the past.

So the NFL’s chief medical officer is going to bat for them now, saying all the boxes were checked off when Brissett was allowed to return to the game after a hit to the back of his head, and reported symptoms after the game.

“All of our protocols were followed,” Dr. Allen Sills said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com.

Sills said that Brissett passed three separate concussion tests, two during the game and one after, and that he “had no symptoms” until after the game. That can happen, but cases like Brissett’s and Russell Wilson‘s invite scrutiny of the process.

Sills said that Brissett’s “mild” symptoms turned up 20 to 30 minutes after the game, and at that point he was placed in the protocol “Out of an abundance of caution.”

“It’s part of the frustration of us as medical practitioners trying to care for [concussions],” Sills said. “We recognize that concussion is not one injury. It’s a spectrum of injuries that are going to have a lot of different presentations. And it is still part of what we, as a medical profession, must better understand this injury so that we can better categorize it and continue our efforts to diagnose it.”

Sills didn’t comment on the Wilson case, since the league’s investigation of that one is ongoing.