According to NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills, M.D., the most important part of any NFL game day – whether it’s a preseason or regular season game, an international game or the Super Bowl – happens in a small room inside the stadium about an hour before kickoff.

A group of 20 to 25 people representing a wide range of medical backgrounds meets in the X-ray room next to the home tunnel at Huntington Bank Field to discuss the variety of safety measures that will take place on game day.

“It’s a lot like what happens in an airplane cockpit right before takeoff,” Sills said Oct. 27 of what is called the “60-minute meeting.” “No matter how many times the pilot has done that takeoff, they’re going to go through the checklist to make sure that everything is done.”

At the 60-minute meeting, medical personnel go over the safety protocols put in place and introduce themselves to each other as well as the head referee, so that the game officials can be familiar with the personnel running onto the field when a player suffers an injury.

Each team fields a staff including a team physician and medical trainers. Additionally, the NFL hires independent medical staff – including spotters, unaffiliated neurotrauma consultants, emergency doctors and paramedics – to ensure that athletes are treated quickly and effectively after sustaining injuries.

“Both of those medical teams are all in here to provide the safest environment for the athletes,” Browns head team physician Dr. James Voos, M.D., said. “So, with that visiting team – who may not have been here before – if there’s an unfortunate injury, we want to be here to support their medical team and help that player to get the exact same type of care that they would get back in their home stadium. So that’s really the goal, is to standardize that level of care.”

The level of care has drastically improved as the expanding worlds of medicine and technology further interact. When a player goes down, it’s not just the on-field medical personnel responding to the injury. Spotters up in a booth will review the play using an average of 16 different camera angles of replay – depending on the stadium – radioing down to the on-field personnel with their evaluation of the injury. Medical personnel located on the sideline also have access to a replay booth, where they can review the play in question to provide the best possible diagnosis in real time.

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