Story idea from Laura Peters.
Super Bowl 49 lived up to its billing as one of the most anticipated Super Bowls in league history, as the New England Patriots held on for an incredible 28-24 victory over the Seattle Seahawks. Sports can teach us a lot about life, but there were some good and bad health lessons we can take away from the big game. We’ll talk about the good takeaways first.
Perseverance – Whether you’re down 10 points in the 4th quarter or staring down weeks of rehab after an ankle injury, keeping your head up and focusing on your goals is very important. It’s not always going to be easy, but in the end it will all be worth it. If you stick to the gameplan and listen to your coach/doctor, good things will happen. You have to put in the hard work if you want to come back from an injury or a deficit.
Prevention Is Preferred to Treatment – I always preach on this blog that prevention is a better course of action than treatment. That’s not to say all ankle sprains are preventable, but healthy eating and regular exercise can help prevent conditions like heart disease or diabetes, and it’s always better to try and prevent these conditions than to treat them in the aftermath. This sentiment also applies to football. As we saw at the end of the game, the Seahawks had the ball on New England’s 1-yard line. The Patriots could have let the Seahawks score and given the ball back to Tom Brady with about 45 seconds remaining, but New England trusted its defense to prevent the game winning touchdown. Malcolm Butler intercepted a slant pass a play later, which prevented the Seahawks from taking a late lead. Preventing that touchdown was much preferred to trying to comeback from another deficit with only seconds remaining.
The Bad
As was evident yesterday, football is a physical sport. Here’s some of the painful lessons we learned from yesterday’s Super Bowl.
Concussions Still a Problem – Head injuries are still a major problem in the NFL, and an ethical debate sparked in the 4th quarter when Julian Edelman caught a pass over the middle and was hit high and hard by safety Kam Chancellor. Edelman stayed on his feet after the hit but he appeared wobbly as he stumbled forward for extra yards. Edelman didn’t look quite right, but he remained in the game. Edelman played a huge part in the comeback, catching the eventual game winning touchdown pass, but should he have even been allowed to be on the field? According to the NFL’s concussion policy, a player should be evaluated for a concussion if they have “motor coordination/balance problems (stumbles, trips/falls, slow/labored movement).” Edelman may have displayed some of those symptoms, but it’s also tough to tell a player he can’t go back in to the Super Bowl because we don’t immediately know the severity of his head injury. Thankfully Edelman didn’t suffer further injury, and he appeared alright after the game, even if he didn’t answer any questions about the injury, other than to say that he wasn’t “allowed to speak about injuries right now.”
Bad Breaks – As we mentioned above, football is a physical sport. Jeremy Lane learned that lesson the hard way after intercepting Tom Brady in the first quarter. Arms are supposed to bend like that.
Ouch. Nasty. Turn away if you get queasy. Jeremy Lane's arm after his interception. #Seahawks #Patriots #SB49 pic.twitter.com/cWU2YuiVWh
— Kelcey Brade (@KelceyBrade) February 2, 2015
Lane should be able to make a full recovery this offseason, and we wish him the best in his rehab.