DALLAS — The NFL maintains extensive health and wellness programs on everything from concussion protocols to mental health.
A DFW psychiatrist, who was watching the Monday night contest between Buffalo and Cincinnati when Damar Hamlin collapsed, believes this particular devastating injury could bring additional questions and both physical and mental health concerns for professional athletes.
"This entire event that's occurred, it gets everybody's attention. It's a bit of a dose of reality," said Gary Malone, MD, and Grapevine psychiatrist, whose patients include former professional athletes.
"Because it is the reality of premature death and injury if you're in a contact sport," Malone continued.
Malone has counseled former players, and also military veterans who expressed later in life that they never considered their mortality when they were young.
"The psychology of young men is that you are invulnerable. They are Godzilla. They are the baddest person ever. They can't be injured," Malone said. "I see a lot of former football players who question that choice and question the advice they got when they were in high school. Because no one leaves a contact sport unscathed."
Notable examples in the NFL include New England Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley, paralyzed in 1978 by a vicious hit from Oakland Raiders defensive back Jack Tatum. His death in 2007 was attributed to heart disease and pneumonia complicated by quadriplegia.
Washington quarterbacks Joe Theisman and Alex Smith suffered eerily similar gruesome leg injuries, compound fractures, that ended their NFL careers. Smith's injury in 2018 in a game versus the Houston Texans. Theisman's injury in 1985, also his lower right leg, in a game against the New York Giants.
And in 2001, New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe suffered a brutal hit to the chest in a game against the New York Jets. Severe internal bleeding nearly killed him. And his injury launched the career of a his backup, a young quarterback named Tom Brady.
"One of the former players I see, he can't think straight," Malone said. "So, he has trouble making a living, he has trouble with his wife, has trouble parenting. And says he wishes he'd never done it."
"If you're in a career that puts you in danger, what's the cost benefit of that career?" said Malone.
A question that made Malone think of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, who retired young in 2019, in part, because of the toll the game was taking on his body.
"Because he was measuring what he lost, but knew that the cost benefit worked the other direction. And that he was not a marionette here to entertain us. He was his own person," Malone said.
"And people criticized him for that. But this is his one life. And he gets to make his own choices."
And being witness to an injury none of them had ever seen before, Malone believes the young athletes who responded with shock and grief on the football field in Cincinnati Monday night, might be pondering that cost benefit now for the very first time.
"If I were counseling them," he said. "I would counsel him to be realistic about his chosen profession."
A profession that reminds us again, the risks are very real.
