Christian Watson didn’t even know which hospital the ambulance took him to, but the Green Bay Packers receiver guessed that from the time he left Lambeau Field to the time he got back was about an hour.
It was actually less.
At a little before 8:30 p.m. local time, Watson was in an ambulance — one that he climbed into on his own and with his full set of pads still on. By 9:19, Watson had already exited the ambulance, run down the tunnel and was back on the sideline.
In between, Watson was coughing up blood, had an X-ray that showed a broken rib and underwent a CT scan plus some blood tests. When the scan and bloodwork showed no additional issues, Watson knew what he had to do, ESPN reported.
“Before I even left [the hospital], I wanted to go back out there,” Watson said. “So I was going to make sure I was going to get back out there if they let me.”
Not only did they let him, but Watson caught two more passes after his return and finished with eight receptions for 113 yards in the Packers’ 27-19 win over the Carolina Panthers on Thursday.
“I think it’s incredible,” Packers safety Xavier McKinney said. “I think it shows resiliency, I think it shows toughness and I think it just shows the love that he has for this team.
“He had his 100 yards [before the injury], and he could’ve just sat it. But the fact that he wasn’t satisfied and the fact that he felt like and he knew that we still needed him out there and he still said, ‘OK, I love this team and I want to be able to go out here for this team and do that,’ that gains our respect.”
Watson was injured on a 53-yard, deep ball catch with 9:11 left in the second quarter. It was his sixth reception of the game, and he was right on the 100-yard mark. He was slow to get up but eventually walked off the field and jogged to the locker room without assistance.
“I think I just came down on the ball or my elbow or something,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe on the field. I got the wind knocked out of me. I got back to the sideline, and I was kind of spitting up some blood or something like that. So, the doctor said I had to go get a CT. I was trying to beg them to not make me do that.”
The next anyone saw of Watson, he was hopping out of the ambulance — pads still on — and running out of the tunnel and back to the Packers’ sideline with 6:56 left in the third quarter.
The TV cameras followed him the entire way.
“It was super dramatic,” Watson said. “I used to watch WWE as a kid. I felt like I was watching WWE Smackdown vs. Raw or something, seeing the cameras on me when I was coming out of the ambulance. That was a little crazy. It was a surreal experience, no doubt, just to go through that and have the fans cheering for me being back out there was definitely exciting.”
Watson reentered the game with 4:01 left in the third quarter, and immediately quarterback Jordan Love threw him a deep ball. Watson couldn’t come down with that one and took a hard fall in the process. Many in the stadium held their breath for a second until Watson popped back up. Shortly thereafter, he caught a 6-yard pass on the first play of the fourth quarter. He added a 7-yarder.
It was Watson’s third 100-yard game of the season. The 53-yard catch was his third reception of 50 or more yards this season, most in the NFL. Watson now has 11 catches of 50-plus yards since 2022, which is second in the league behind only Nico Collins (12). It also was Watson’s 13th reception of 20 or more yards this season, second behind Jaxon Smith-Njigba (14).
“The grit to go back in the game,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said in amazement. “He had a heck of a night. I can’t imagine what he would have had, had he not missed so much time.”
Watson wasn’t the first player to leave an NFL stadium in an ambulance but no one in the Packers’ locker room could remember one who returned from the hospital to play in the same game.
“That was a first for me,” running back Josh Jacobs said.
Even if he didn’t know it, Watson went to St. Vincent Hospital, merely 3.9 miles from Lambeau Field.
“That was an experience, for sure,” Watson said.
Culled from ESPN
NFLPA Challenges League’s Oversight
Yankeescores reported that the NFL Players Association has issued a statement calling for a “full investigation” into the medical care provided to Eagles quarterback, Jalen Hurts
ESPN reported that the NFLPA was responding to recent comments from NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills as well as reports that the league will not issue any punishment to the Eagles for how they managed the process surrounding Hurts being cleared to play Week 5 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, according to a league source.
