NFL 2022 Season

[Vermont Green]

Didn't read through all of the comments, sorry, new CEO at work today has the IT group buzzing.  Anyway, who wasn't thinking of Hank Gathers at this moment?  I sure was!

Hope Hamlin has a full and speedy recovery.

For me it was Reggie Lewis and Hank Gathers (in that order).  I would think Hamlin has received harder hits to his chest at points in his career.  Why did this one stop his heart?  Was there something wrong with his heart to begin with or did that hit cause a healthy heart to stop?

Lots of questions regarding this tragic injury.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Didn't read through all of the comments, sorry, new CEO at work today has the IT group buzzing.  Anyway, who wasn't thinking of Hank Gathers at this moment?  I sure was!

Hope Hamlin has a full and speedy recovery.

For me it was Reggie Lewis and Hank Gathers (in that order).  I would think Hamlin has received harder hits to his chest at points in his career.  Why did this one stop his heart?  Was there something wrong with his heart to begin with or did that hit cause a healthy heart to stop?

Lots of questions regarding this tragic injury.

This video by a sports medicine doctor has a great explanation of what likely happened: https://youtu.be/H-G9mziXL9w

[johnnygreen]

The ramifications of canceling last night's game are enormous, because it effected so many things. I wonder if the league changes the policy on injuries going forward, where the non-injured players on the field have to immediately go to the sidelines if medical attention is needed (not injuries that require the training staff).

[SparzWizard]

Bart Scott under fire for his comments about Tee Higgins tackling Damar Hamlin.

[Goldstar88]

Bart Scott under fire for his comments about Tee Higgins tackling Damar Hamlin.

Good. Bart Scott is an idiot.

[GreenlyGreeny]

Hopefully Hamlin pulls through, obviously. I used to love football but fell out of love because of Junior Seau and stuff like this. Both football and hockey are more physical than they really need to be. It may be time to seriously change those two sports so they become more about finesse and less about physicality?

In terms of seeding, probably the best thing to do is cancel the Bills/Bengals game, add an eighth seed and get rid of the byes. NFL gets two extra playoff games to make up for the lost Bills/Bengals game. Sucks for whoever wins the NFC no. 1, though, but they’ll likely beat an eight seed without any trouble. Basketball and hockey have eight seeds without a bye for anybody, so this is an opportunity for football to experiment, really…

Admittedly, I’m biased in favor of Brady, so I’d love to see the top seed in the NFC lose their bye and increase the odds of a team ranked 5-7 getting to the divisional round against the top NFC seed. Heck, if everything bounced the right way, Brady may only have to travel in the second-round. 

[ozgod]

Apparently Hamlin had to be revived twice, once in the stadium and once in the ambulance. The risk with cardiac arrest is always brain damage as body tissue dies quickly when your heart stops beating. Fingers crossed that they were able to apply CPR and defibrillation quick enough to reduce that risk.

[ozgod]

Didn't read through all of the comments, sorry, new CEO at work today has the IT group buzzing.  Anyway, who wasn't thinking of Hank Gathers at this moment?  I sure was!

Hope Hamlin has a full and speedy recovery.

For me it was Reggie Lewis and Hank Gathers (in that order).  I would think Hamlin has received harder hits to his chest at points in his career.  Why did this one stop his heart?  Was there something wrong with his heart to begin with or did that hit cause a healthy heart to stop?

Lots of questions regarding this tragic injury.

This video by a sports medicine doctor has a great explanation of what likely happened: https://youtu.be/H-G9mziXL9w

Commotio cardio is rare but it can happen when you take a hit to the chest at a specific point of your heart rhythm, which can cause arryhthmia and lead to cardiac arrest.  From the NIH:

The contact occurs during ventricular repolarization, specifically during the upstroke of the T-wave before its peak. If the impact occurs later than this, it is more likely to result in a transient complete heart block, left bundle branch block, or ST-segment elevation. While this period occupies only about 1 percent of the cardiac cycle, the relative proportion is increased with increasing heart rate, as may occur during exercise.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526014/

Assuming it was commotio cordis that caused his cardiac arrest, and absent any knowledge of any heart conditions, it is just the extraordinarily unfortunate circumstance of Hamlin getting hit in the chest in just the right spot while his heart was in that particularly vulnerable part of the heartbeat cycle. Just terrible luck.

[ozgod]

On another (unfortunate) note, Covid misinformation has spiked on social media, mainly Twitter, following Hamlin's collapse. There's a narrative that the Covid vaccine is what caused Hamlin to collapse. Of course these people have zero knowledge about Hamlin's condition or anything else, but they are using his situation to push their viewpoints, sometimes for financial reasons.

The baseless tweets began to circulate within minutes of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s stunning collapse on the field during “Monday Night Football.”

Anti-vaxxers and right-wing provocateurs sought to link the injury that left Hamlin in critical condition and the coronavirus vaccine, without any evidence. Their claims built on years of coronavirus vaccine misinformation that has been seeded across social media.

“This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly,” tweeted the pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, who leads the youth group Turning Point USA. His tweet was viewed nearly 10 million times as of Tuesday.

“Everybody knows what happened to Damar Hamlin because it’s happened to too many athletes around the world since COVID vaccination was required in sports,” said former Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, in a tweet that was viewed more than 2 million times and visible under the #DamarHamlin hashtag trending in the United States.

Just before Twitter rolled back its covid misinformation policy in November, a more than hour-long video was released on the video service Rumble that promotes a debunked claim that the coronavirus vaccine is causing people to die. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense promoted the film this winter, but its creators generated newfound attention by seizing on the viral footage of Hamlin collapsing.

The film’s Twitter account quickly tweeted to its more than 200,000 followers, linking Hamlin’s collapse to the vaccine.

“Prior to 2021, Athletes collapsing on the field was NOT a normal event,” the film’s account tweeted, along with footage of Hamlin hitting the field. “This is becoming an undeniable (and an extremely concerning) pattern.” The tweet also included a series of syringe emoji.

Brian Castrucci, head of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for public health, said he watched in horror at the speed at which Hamlin’s devastating injury was weaponized by that account and other anti-vaccine hashtags.

“This is the modern day equivalent of a snake oil salesman,” Castrucci said of the film’s promoters and others. “The problem is the snake oil salesman had to go town to town. They couldn’t reach millions of people with one tweet.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/01/03/covid-misinfo-damar-hamlin-collapse/

I guess the film's directors don't watch soccer, because players collapsing on the field due to cardiac arrest is more common in that sport than in football. But why get the facts in the way of a good story.

[Roy H.]

On another (unfortunate) note, Covid misinformation has spiked on social media, mainly Twitter, following Hamlin's collapse. There's a narrative that the Covid vaccine is what caused Hamlin to collapse. Of course these people have zero knowledge about Hamlin's condition or anything else, but they are using his situation to push their viewpoints, sometimes for financial reasons.

The baseless tweets began to circulate within minutes of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s stunning collapse on the field during “Monday Night Football.”

Anti-vaxxers and right-wing provocateurs sought to link the injury that left Hamlin in critical condition and the coronavirus vaccine, without any evidence. Their claims built on years of coronavirus vaccine misinformation that has been seeded across social media.

“This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly,” tweeted the pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, who leads the youth group Turning Point USA. His tweet was viewed nearly 10 million times as of Tuesday.

“Everybody knows what happened to Damar Hamlin because it’s happened to too many athletes around the world since COVID vaccination was required in sports,” said former Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, in a tweet that was viewed more than 2 million times and visible under the #DamarHamlin hashtag trending in the United States.

Just before Twitter rolled back its covid misinformation policy in November, a more than hour-long video was released on the video service Rumble that promotes a debunked claim that the coronavirus vaccine is causing people to die. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense promoted the film this winter, but its creators generated newfound attention by seizing on the viral footage of Hamlin collapsing.

The film’s Twitter account quickly tweeted to its more than 200,000 followers, linking Hamlin’s collapse to the vaccine.

“Prior to 2021, Athletes collapsing on the field was NOT a normal event,” the film’s account tweeted, along with footage of Hamlin hitting the field. “This is becoming an undeniable (and an extremely concerning) pattern.” The tweet also included a series of syringe emoji.

Brian Castrucci, head of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for public health, said he watched in horror at the speed at which Hamlin’s devastating injury was weaponized by that account and other anti-vaccine hashtags.

“This is the modern day equivalent of a snake oil salesman,” Castrucci said of the film’s promoters and others. “The problem is the snake oil salesman had to go town to town. They couldn’t reach millions of people with one tweet.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/01/03/covid-misinfo-damar-hamlin-collapse/

I guess the film's directors don't watch soccer, because players collapsing on the field due to cardiac arrest is more common in that sport than in football. But why get the facts in the way of a good story.

Causation aside, has there been a large increase in athletes collapsing from cardiac problems?  What are they citing as evidence?   Among US professional sports I can’t think of similar examples recently.

[ozgod]

On another (unfortunate) note, Covid misinformation has spiked on social media, mainly Twitter, following Hamlin's collapse. There's a narrative that the Covid vaccine is what caused Hamlin to collapse. Of course these people have zero knowledge about Hamlin's condition or anything else, but they are using his situation to push their viewpoints, sometimes for financial reasons.

The baseless tweets began to circulate within minutes of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s stunning collapse on the field during “Monday Night Football.”

Anti-vaxxers and right-wing provocateurs sought to link the injury that left Hamlin in critical condition and the coronavirus vaccine, without any evidence. Their claims built on years of coronavirus vaccine misinformation that has been seeded across social media.

“This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly,” tweeted the pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, who leads the youth group Turning Point USA. His tweet was viewed nearly 10 million times as of Tuesday.

“Everybody knows what happened to Damar Hamlin because it’s happened to too many athletes around the world since COVID vaccination was required in sports,” said former Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, in a tweet that was viewed more than 2 million times and visible under the #DamarHamlin hashtag trending in the United States.

Just before Twitter rolled back its covid misinformation policy in November, a more than hour-long video was released on the video service Rumble that promotes a debunked claim that the coronavirus vaccine is causing people to die. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense promoted the film this winter, but its creators generated newfound attention by seizing on the viral footage of Hamlin collapsing.

The film’s Twitter account quickly tweeted to its more than 200,000 followers, linking Hamlin’s collapse to the vaccine.

“Prior to 2021, Athletes collapsing on the field was NOT a normal event,” the film’s account tweeted, along with footage of Hamlin hitting the field. “This is becoming an undeniable (and an extremely concerning) pattern.” The tweet also included a series of syringe emoji.

Brian Castrucci, head of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for public health, said he watched in horror at the speed at which Hamlin’s devastating injury was weaponized by that account and other anti-vaccine hashtags.

“This is the modern day equivalent of a snake oil salesman,” Castrucci said of the film’s promoters and others. “The problem is the snake oil salesman had to go town to town. They couldn’t reach millions of people with one tweet.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/01/03/covid-misinfo-damar-hamlin-collapse/

I guess the film's directors don't watch soccer, because players collapsing on the field due to cardiac arrest is more common in that sport than in football. But why get the facts in the way of a good story.

Causation aside, has there been a large increase in athletes collapsing from cardiac problems?  What are they citing as evidence?   Among US professional sports I can’t think of similar examples recently.

Here's an incomplete list of athletes who died from what is called "sudden cardiac death" based on Wikipedia. These don't include athletes that suffered cardiac arrest and survived, like Chris Pronger, Jay Boouwmeester, Fabrice Muamba, Christian Eriksen and (so far) Hamlin, so I added those and put a * to denote that they are not fatalities.

Code: [Select]

Year Name Age Sport
1906 David Wilson 23 soccer
1921 Lyle Downs 24 Austral. football
1923 Frank Hayes 35 horse racing
1932 Frank Warfield 35 baseball
1948 Stan Mauldin 27 Amer. football
1953 Herb Gorman 28 baseball
1953 John Kirkby 23 soccer
1954 Dave Sparks 26 Amer. football
1960 Dixie Howell 40 baseball
1966 Petar Radaković 29 soccer
1968 Viktor Blinov 22 ice hockey
1968 Wayne Larkin 29 ice hockey
1971 Chuck Hughes 28 Amer. football
1973 Pedro Berruezo 27 soccer
1973 Nikola Mantov 23 soccer
1973 Pavão 26 soccer
1977 Renato Curi 24 soccer
1977 Luc. Vendemini 24 basketball
1979 J. V. Cain 28 Amer. football
1980 Omar Sahnoun 24 soccer
1981 Rauli Levonen 28 ice hockey
1983 Larry Gordon 28 Amer. football
1983 Carl Morton 39 baseball
1986 Flo Hyman 31 volleyball
1988 Pete Maravich 40 basketball
1989 Samuel Okwaraji 25 soccer
1990 Hank Gathers 23 basketball
1990 David Longhurst 25 soccer
1993 Michael Klein 33 soccer
1993 Reggie Lewis 27 basketball
1994 Bruno Pezzey 39 soccer
1995 Sergei Grinkov 28 figure skating
1997 Hédi Berkhissa 24 soccer
1998 Robbie James 40 soccer
1998 Stéphane Morin 29 ice hockey
1998 Chris Pronger* 24 ice hockey
2000 Cătălin Hîldan 24 soccer
2000 Conrad McRae 29 basketball
2002 Darryl Kile 33 baseball
2003 Marc-Vivien Foé 28 soccer
2003 Brad Rone 34 boxing
2004 Derrick Faison 36 Amer. football
2004 Miklós Fehér 24 soccer
2004 Crist. Júnior 25 soccer
2004 Corm. McAnallen 24 Gaelic football
2004 Serginho 30 soccer
2004 Sergejs Žoltoks 31 ice hockey
2005 Jason Collier 28 basketball
2005 Hugo Cunha 28 soccer
2005 Eddie Guerrero 38 wrestling
2005 Thomas Herrion 23 Amer. football
2005 Scott Mason 28 cricket
2006 Mohd Abdelwahab 22 soccer
2006 Matt Gadsby 27 soccer
2006 Rasmus Green 26 soccer
2006 Nilton Mendes 30 soccer
2007 Joe Kennedy 28 baseball
2007 Jesse Marunde 27 weightlifting
2007 Damien Nash 24 Amer. football
2007 Chaswe Nsofwa 28 soccer
2007 Phil O'Donnell 35 soccer
2007 Antonio Puerta 22 soccer
2007 Darcy Robinson 26 ice hockey
2007 Ryan Shay 28 marathon
2008 Heath Benedict 24 Amer. football
2008 Alex Cherepanov 19 ice hockey
2008 György Kolonics 36 canoeing
2008 Mickey Renaud 19 ice hockey
2008 Ginty Vrede 22 kickboxing
2009 Víctor Ávalos 37 soccer
2009 Seb. Faisst 20 handball
2009 Daniel Jarque 26 soccer
2009 Frederiek Nolf 21 cycling
2009 Gábor Ocskay 33 ice hockey
2010 Gaines Adams 26 Amer. football
2010 Endur. Idahor 25 soccer
2010 José Lima 37 baseball
2010 Igor Misko 23 ice hockey
2011 Bobsam Elejiko 30 soccer
2011 Naoki Matsuda 34 soccer
2011 Robert Traylor 34 basketball
2012 Jaouad Akaddar 28 soccer
2012 Mitchell Cole 27 soccer
2012 Alexanderle Oen 26 swimming
2012 Pier. Morosini 25 soccer
2012 Fabrice Muamba* 24 soccer
2013 Sékou Camara 27 soccer
2013 S. del Rosario 30 MMA
2013 Alex Marques 20 soccer
2013 Alen Pamić 23 soccer
2013 Chand. Williams 27 Amer. football
2015 Cristian Gómez 27 soccer
2015 David Oniya 30 soccer
2016 Gilbert Bulawan 29 basketball
2016 Ben Dermé 34 soccer
2016 Patrick Ekeng 26 soccer
2016 Bern. Ribeiro 26 soccer
2017 Neil Fingleton 36 basketball
2017 Fab Melo 26 basketball
2017 Cheick Tioté 30 soccer
2018 Davide Astori 31 soccer
2018 Mich. Goolaerts 23 cycling
2018 Zeke Upshaw 26 basketball
2020 J.Boouwmeester* 37 ice hockey
2021 F. de la Cruz 37 baseball
2021 Chris. Eriksen* 29 soccer
2022 Damar Hamlin* 24 Amer. Football


There's a lot of science that's gone into trying to understand how otherwise healthy, fit young people would suddenly experience cardiac failures, and there's no any single reason, although the majority for those under 35 seem to be inherited cardiac conditions such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and anomalous origin of a coronary artery, which are the two most common causes in the US.  For those above 35, most SCD events are due to acquired atherosclerotic coronary artery disease. More info can be found in this article from the NIH, which did a study on Sudden Cardiac Death.

As for those people posting allegations on Twitter about the Covid vaccine causing these "increased deaths", I don't believe they are citing anything as evidence...but these days we don't need to put up evidence on Twitter, just put a poll up and see how many people believe you 

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Didn't read through all of the comments, sorry, new CEO at work today has the IT group buzzing.  Anyway, who wasn't thinking of Hank Gathers at this moment?  I sure was!

Hope Hamlin has a full and speedy recovery.

For me it was Reggie Lewis and Hank Gathers (in that order).  I would think Hamlin has received harder hits to his chest at points in his career.  Why did this one stop his heart?  Was there something wrong with his heart to begin with or did that hit cause a healthy heart to stop?

Lots of questions regarding this tragic injury.

This video by a sports medicine doctor has a great explanation of what likely happened: https://youtu.be/H-G9mziXL9w

Commotio cardio is rare but it can happen when you take a hit to the chest at a specific point of your heart rhythm, which can cause arryhthmia and lead to cardiac arrest.  From the NIH:

The contact occurs during ventricular repolarization, specifically during the upstroke of the T-wave before its peak. If the impact occurs later than this, it is more likely to result in a transient complete heart block, left bundle branch block, or ST-segment elevation. While this period occupies only about 1 percent of the cardiac cycle, the relative proportion is increased with increasing heart rate, as may occur during exercise.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526014/

Assuming it was commotio cordis that caused his cardiac arrest, and absent any knowledge of any heart conditions, it is just the extraordinarily unfortunate circumstance of Hamlin getting hit in the chest in just the right spot while his heart was in that particularly vulnerable part of the heartbeat cycle. Just terrible luck.

Pretty much. I'm just guessing here, but it's probably the type of thing that has, like, a .5% chance of happening—lots of things have to align in just the wrong way at just the wrong time.

Like you said, unless they uncover a previously unknown heart condition in Hamlin, this likely comes down to sheer bad luck.

[Roy H.]

Bizarre idea I just read that the NFL is considering:

Step 1:  Treat the Bills-Bengals game as a no contest. 

Step 2:  If the Bills and Chiefs both have 3 losses at the end of the season, use a random number generator to determine a game that "doesn't count" for Kansas City's seeding purposes.  Assuming it's one of KC's wins that is stricken, both teams finish 13-3, tied for the best record, and traditional tiebreakers would be considered (meaning the Bills would get the #1 seed based upon H2H).  If it's a KC loss that is stricken, then the Chiefs advance.  I guess basically this would mean there's about a 81% chance of Buffalo advancing?

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Bizarre idea I just read that the NFL is considering:

Step 1:  Treat the Bills-Bengals game as a no contest. 

Step 2:  If the Bills and Chiefs both have 3 losses at the end of the season, use a random number generator to determine a game that "doesn't count" for Kansas City's seeding purposes.  Assuming it's one of KC's wins that is stricken, both teams finish 13-3, tied for the best record, and traditional tiebreakers would be considered (meaning the Bills would get the #1 seed based upon H2H).  If it's a KC loss that is stricken, then the Chiefs advance.  I guess basically this would mean there's about a 81% chance of Buffalo advancing?

That is weird. And it seems unfair, IMO.

That said, I don't know what the best solution is.

[Redz]

Bizarre idea I just read that the NFL is considering:

Step 1:  Treat the Bills-Bengals game as a no contest. 

Step 2:  If the Bills and Chiefs both have 3 losses at the end of the season, use a random number generator to determine a game that "doesn't count" for Kansas City's seeding purposes.  Assuming it's one of KC's wins that is stricken, both teams finish 13-3, tied for the best record, and traditional tiebreakers would be considered (meaning the Bills would get the #1 seed based upon H2H).  If it's a KC loss that is stricken, then the Chiefs advance.  I guess basically this would mean there's about a 81% chance of Buffalo advancing?

That is weird. And it seems unfair, IMO.

That said, I don't know what the best solution is.

It's kind of cold, but I think the Bills should just take a loss for the Cincy game if they're not going to finish it.  It was their guy who went down.  Call it a TKO and move on.