Like this umpire had on:
As I poster earlier padding does not prevent CC from happening and it happens mostly in Little League baseball. Could suffer CC from a pitch thrown 30 mph, nothing can be done to prevent it except not to play sports. This is not a new phenomenon just brought to light because it happened on MNF.
Truth. It is not the severity of the impact, it is the precision of the location and the split-second timing. Just a freak occurrence and we hope it takes a long, long time before it happens again in the NFL. It mostly impacts younger boys (not a lot of chest muscle and tissue protecting the heart) and mostly young baseball pitchers, lacrosse goalies and hockey players. As the father of a pitcher and lacrosse goalie, my wife was well versed in this injury.
As it turns out, my older son (the goalie) had a lacrosse ball bounce on the turf oddly and jump up under his mask/neck guard and catch him in the throat his senior year in HS. Struggled to breathe, had a seizure, and got an ambulance ride. Quickly recovered though. Continued playing including a year of college club. Younger son was pitching his freshman year in college and got smoked with a come-backer that hit top of shoulder and cheekbone. Fractured cheek and concussion, but lucky all in all, could have been much worse. Played through his junior year but was never really the same.
I really felt it last night for Hamlin's mom, when they mentioned her being in the stadium. Those two incidents I mentioned were about the scariest days of my life. I wish that experience on no one, but we all love sports, and our kids love to play them, so you take the risks.
At least the NFL guys have plenty of doctors and medical equipment on hand. Youth sports are not so fortunate.