Green Bay Packers wide receiver Christian Watson made a stunning return to the field on Thursday, October 29, shortly after being taken away in an ambulance.
Watson, 27, crashed down hard while making a catch during the second quarter of the Packers’ 27-19 win over the Carolina Panthers at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field. Immediately after, Watson said he “couldn’t breathe on the field.”
“I got the wind knocked out of me,” he told reporters after the game. “I got back to the sideline and I was spitting up some blood or something like that. The doctors said I had to go get a CT [scan]. I was trying to beg them to not make me do that, but it is what it is.”
Watson was forced to leave the field and was taken to a local hospital via ambulance with members of the team’s medical staff.
It was determined that Watson had a broken rib, but he said the “major stuff was all good, no internal bleeding or anything like that.”
“I told them before we even left [the hospital] that I wanted to go back out there,” Watson explained. “I was going to make sure I was going to get back out there if they let me.”
Ultimately, that’s exactly what happened.
Upon returning to Lambeau, Watson was seen on the Prime Video broadcast jumping out of the ambulance and running back onto the field halfway through the third quarter to a raucous ovation from Packers fans.
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Watson noted that he played the rest of the game with “a molded pad” on his ribs.
“I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of anything like that,” he said with a laugh. “I hope I never have to hear about anything like that again, or experience anything like that again.”
Packers quarterback Jordan Love marveled at the wild sequence of events during his postgame press conference.
“Man, that was crazy,” Love, 27, said. “There was a lot of people cheering and stuff was going on. I didn’t know what was happening. Then I see Christian running out and he was just resurrected. It was great to see him, obviously.”
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur was similarly stunned.
“It’s pretty remarkable,” LaFleur, 46, said after the game. “He landed on the ball, I believe that’s what I was told, and he was coughing up blood.”
The coach added, “He had a heck of a night, and I just can’t imagine what he would have had he not missed so much time.”
Watson finished the game with eight catches for 113 yards.
