TCU players, North Texas doctors react to injury to Bills safety Damar Hamlin

FORT WORTH, Texas — TCU head football coach Sonny Dykes will talk to his team about the injury to the Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin.

“I’ve always been a believer that when things like this happen, there’s always a cloud. There’s always a certain level of anxiety. And I’ve found the best way to deal with that is to talk through it,” Dykes said Tuesday morning.

Hamlin, who plays safety, was injured on a play during the primetime Monday Night Football game.

“That was a scary play, a scary situation,” TCU defensive lineman Dylan Horton said.

Horton played safety at Frisco High School.

“My family, TCU, we’re all playing for him, hoping he gets better,” Horton said.

The Buffalo Bills confirmed Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest after making a tackle in the game’s first quarter.

“What we saw last night was America getting to see what happens when a medical consequence is happening on a field in front of everybody,” Dr. Chad Stephens of Noble Pain Management & Sports Medicine said. 

Stephens is trained in sports medicine and interventional pain management.

“Football is one of the least prevalent sports for this: It’s more baseball, cricket, hockey, lacrosse, things where there’s a lot of direct blows to the chest,” Stephens said. “And so football is very rare to have this kind of an injury.”

In 2014, Stephens said he conducted a study with a company called, Unequal, where they put quarter-inch Kevlar inserts into the helmets of varsity athletes at Liberty Christian and three other schools. Stephens and his team found the inserts reduced the concussion risk.  

Now, Stephens said he’d like to see athletes wear well-tested chest protectors that have been studied and that are made of the appropriate material, such as the chest and heart protector made by Unequal.

NFL players wear shoulder pads that do have a chest protector component.

Stephens said even more can be done to promote safety.

“I bet there’s a lot of mommas and daddies out there, looking for ways to find preventative gear right now so their kids can play,” Stephens, who is also the father of a football player, said. “Should I have let my son play without all the protective gear (this past football season)? I probably shouldn’t have. But even, as a parent and a doctor, I got a little lax there. And it’s a good reminder — kind of tugged at my heartstrings a little bit as you can probably tell – that I don’t want to worry about what people might think. I want to protect the athletes and give them a chance to play tomorrow.”