His name rings like a pulp fiction gunslinger’s. Stone Johnson. Hardly anyone even knows it any longer. But the name holds real prominence, especially today as replays of Damar Hamlin’s collapse on a football field earlier this month has become a story line in every single NFL game.
Johnson was—by almost any definition—an amazing athlete. In a segregated Dallas, he was a 360-degree high school superstar, described by one of his long-ago teammates as one of the “greatest athletes ever to come through Dallas.”
Later, at Grambling, he played quarterback, defensive back, place kicker and punter. In the spring, he was also a world-class sprinter, good enough to compete in the 1960 Rome Olympics. His 4X100 relay team won gold but was disqualified for a baton pass violation. After the Olympics, he was a promising member of the AFL Kansas City Chiefs. Johnson was Bo Jackson decades before Bo Jackson. His number ‘33’ is retired in Kansas City.
In a meaningless pre-season game, the last day of August 1963 between the Chiefs and the then-New York Titans, Johnson suffered a broken neck on a kickoff return. He died September 8th. But Johnson isn’t the only NFL player to die from injuries on the field or to die from injuries from playing the game.
While Johnson’s story may stand out, in the contemporary history of the NFL, it may not even be all that unique. Howard Glenn, an offensive lineman for the New York Titans, died three years before Johnson, also from a broken neck suffered in a game. Football is a violent sport. Yet there is no more popular game played in the U.S. today. In a recent Ipsos poll, men, women, Democrats, Republicans, independents, all ethnic groups rated football their favorite sport.
“You just love it,” said Brandon Stokley, former NFL wide receiver and current Denver radio sports talk personality. “You love to compete,” Stokley said on a top of the hour break from a recent remote radio broadcast. “You love the camaraderie, the team aspects of it. You can’t find that anywhere else…all of those combined make it such a great sport.”
Stokley is an exception in today’s NFL, playing for five teams over a fifteen-year career, including the Denver Broncos. During his time as a player, he saw hundreds of teammates, including college, come and go, some with career-ending injuries. But to a person, he said, all knew the risks of playing the game.
“You realize a lot of guys aren’t going to make it to the NFL. You might be playing Division One, Division Two or Three, NAIA, JUCO or whatever the case might be, then that’s gonna be it for you. You’re not gonna take another step and so…part of playing football is getting injured.”
Even watching the Monday Night football game where the Buffalo Bills’ Hamlin went down after a hard hit to the chest, Stokley said players accept the risks. “You don’t think you’re gonna die on the football field, you don’t think you’re gonna get paralyzed on the football field. You do realize if you play football, you will get hurt, you will get injured.”
Stokley endured his own share of injuries playing football, including a concussion in a 2013 game while playing for the Baltimore Ravens. The injury ended his season. The three-time Super Bowl player also settled with the New York Giants over an injury issue. But football, despite the risks, is not something he regrets nor has second thoughts about. Football, he said, is like life. “There’s a chance I could get in a wreck…all kind of bad things can happen. You just don’t let your mind go there. You just go out there and play.”
While Stokley remains firmly in the majority in his opinion about football, the MNF injury suffered by Hamlin got an entirely different take from Denver Bronco defensive lineman, DeShawn Williams. “My son is not playing football,” said Williams after watching the Hamlin injury.
But while there may be some dip in the game’s popularity, especially after the Hamlin injury, it likely is only temporary. The game, said newly installed Colorado State University-Pueblo football coach Philip Vigil, is not just running plays. It’s a life-lesson.
“Football teaches teamwork, communication, persistence, and the value of sacrifice,” said Vigil. Players, he said, learn “there is a process to achieve your goals and that you must work every day to attain them.” Like Stokley, Vigil believes that football is a metaphor for life. “To win, everyone must be skilled, committed and do their part.”
There is no doubt that football is violent. The physics bear it out. As an example, a six-foot, 200-pound player can generate as much as 1,600 pounds of tackling force on an opponent. Still, research has proven that a body can take twice that amount of force if the impact is distributed evenly and equipment is worn properly.
But the current NFL playoffs are testament to the inherent violence of the game. Injuries have forced the San Francisco 49’ers to play with a quarterback who was the last player taken in the 2022 NFL draft. Normally, a player like that will never step into an NFL huddle, let alone start the game.
The Miami Dolphins played on Sunday with their third string quarterback. The team’s starting quarterback was deemed unable to play after three earlier concussions, including a particularly graphic head injury suffered earlier this season.
Years ago, violent head injuries were often chalked up to a player ‘getting his bell rung.’ But that has changed. Today’s players thought to have a head injury are immediately checked out on the sidelines by a physician. If protocols are not met, the player cannot return to the game.
Because of concussions that have caused long term brain trauma to retired players, a number of ex-players or their families have donated the player’s brains to Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. Among them are Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau and former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez. Both died of suicide.
After hospitalization that included a medically induced coma, Damar Hamlin has so far begun to recover from his on-field heart attack. But Hamlin is not the first player to suffer cardiac arrest in an NFL game.
On October 24th in 1971, during a game between the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears, 28-year-old Lions’receiver Chuck Hughes suffered what would be a fatal heart attack as he made his way back to the huddle. He died four days later. Hamlin’s survival was greatly enhanced by epic gains in medi- cal care mandated by the NFL that did not exist when the Lions played the Bears a half century earlier.
Stokley said all players know they will be injured playing football. It’s only a matter of when and will they ever play again.
