Detroit Lions linebacker Jack Campbell was resting and expected to spend the night in the hospital for testing and monitoring after sustaining a scary neck injury, the team announced soon after its 19-15 victory against the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday afternoon.
Campbell, a fourth-year player who made his first Pro Bowl last season, was lying face down and motionless on the field after tackling Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson early in the fourth quarter.
Players were emotional as they knelt on the field, and the crowd watched in concerned silence as medical staff tended to the injured player for around 10 minutes, before strapping him to a backboard and carting him off the field. Campbell is said to have been breathing and alert when he was taken to the hospital.
“Thoughts and prayers are with Jack and his family,” Lions coach Dan Campbell told reporters after the game. “He’s being taken care of. We don’t have any new information. We’ll keep you updated as this goes, but we’re thinking about him.”
In the locker room, the coach was fired up as he congratulated his players on a gritty victory over an NFC North rival that had entered the game undefeated. He quickly became emotional when the topic turned to their injured teammate.
“I do not have any more information on Jack,” he said. “We don’t know anything else at this point. So here’s what I want to do, man. We’re gonna take a knee and I want to pray for Jack, OK? And let’s keep him in our thoughts and prayers, man.”
Jack Campbell was injured on the first play of the fourth quarter, with the Lions clinging to a 12-7 lead. Vikings quarterback Kyler Murray completed a 10-yard pass to Hockenson on the play, with the tackle by Campbell and teammate Jimmy Rolder setting up fourth down and 5 yards to go for Minnesota. Rolder also suffered a hamstring injury on the play and did not return to the game.
Before play resumed, Detroit edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson gathered the defense and delivered a few heartfelt words.
Then he and his teammates went back to work, with Hutchinson applying pressure on Murray and Lions cornerback D.J. Reed knocking the ball away from intended receiver Jordan Anderson for an incomplete pass and a turnover on downs.
“I was filled with a lot of emotions,” Hutchinson told reporters after the game. “We were more united than we had ever been before that play. It’s a weird dynamic, between football being a game, and then snap out of it to seeing a dude being carted off, and then right back in it. Riding that roller coaster, it’s a little foreign, for sure.”
Immediately after returning to the sideline, Detroit’s defensive players gathered in a circle.
“In those type of moments, you forget football,” Lions linebacker Derrick Barnes told reporters after the game. “It’s about the person. Football was the last thing on my mind when that happened. It was all about Jack.”
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