There is never an ideal time to have a seizure or cardiac arrest. But, if there was, BJ Thompson certainly picked it. The Kansas City Chiefs player was sat in a special teams meeting last summer when both of those medical crises happened to him. Harrison Butker raced out of the room to get help for his ailing teammate and doctors were able to get the 25-year-old's heart back in rhythm using CPR and a single AED shock. Fortunately for Thompson, the Chiefs' medical team were ready for everything. They had practiced their Emergency Action Plan (EAP) 72 hours before and knew exactly what needed to be done. Every NFL club is required to write and practice their own EAP for all training camp sites, practice facilities and game day venues. It is their bible for when things go wrong. The idea of an EAP came from a doctor in rural West Virginia. While covering high school football in his local community, he realized how little planning there was for a medical emergency. Now his brainchild is mandated throughout the NFL and it saved Thompson's life. The NFL's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Allen Sills, told the Daily Mail: 'The Chiefs were practicing their plan at their team facility, not at their stadium, but at their training facility. 'They did that, I believe, on a Monday, and three days later, one of their players collapsed into a cardiac arrest inside the facility, and so they actually activated just what they had practiced three days before. 'Thankfully, there was a very successful outcome from that incident. It just illustrates why we put so much emphasis on this, why it's an annual thing, and why we do it at both the training facility and at the game facility. 'If you think about it, players, coaches and staff spend a lot more time at that training facility than they do at the stadium and on game day. It's important we're prepared at both locations.' While fans are sinking beers and finding their seats on game day, medical personnel sit down in the bowels of every stadium for a one-hour meeting before kickoff to talk through their plans. Present are doctors and trainers from both teams, independent medical staff - which is made up of a concussion specialist, unaffiliated neuro-doctors, an airway specialist, an emergency response physician, paramedics, stadium EMS crew, spotters and the game referee. It is why Damar Hamlin received such quick life-saving treatment when the Buffalo Bills star went into cardiac arrest on the field against the Cincinnati Bengals in 2023 and it will undoubtedly save many more players. 'The EAP is simply a recipe of how we're going to handle a variety of medical emergencies,' Sills added. 'A cardiac emergency, a spine fracture with paralysis, asplenic rupture, whatever those scenarios might be, they're all covered basically by who's going to do what? What equipment do we need and where are we going to go? 'Those plans get prepared by every team and they practice those plans. They actually go through supervised rehearsals where they will go through those scenarios. 'And it's not just "hey, what would happen if you did this?" We literally have a company that will come in and take a mannequin in full football gear and drop it on the ground and say "player went down, go figure it out". 'They'll go through those scenarios with supervision, they'll videotape it, they'll make suggestions and things like that will happen in the offseason, both at the training facility and at the game facility. 'That has immediate relevance to Damar Hamlin. I often get asked, "how in that moment did those teams work together and get to that outcome?" 'Because they practiced it.' Amid the noisy chaos of an NFL game there is only one place on the field where players, staff and medics can truly be alone. The blue tent, mandated in every NFL stadium since the 2017 season, is not a glamorous place and it's exactly what it sounds like. A basic pop-up structure secured to the ground by a rectangular metal frame that can be lifted up when a player needs help away from the eyes of more than 60,000 fans - not to mention the millions watching on TV. Inside is a bed and nothing else. It's basic but private and allows players to be assessed for concussions in an environment similar to a doctor's office. It's more spacious than you'd think. You can easily get 10 to 12 people inside but only three are allowed in the heat of battle: the player, a team doctor and an unaffiliated neuro-specialist. No coaches, no agents, no TV cameras. Sills, himself a professor of neurological surgery at Vanderbilt University, explains: 'We have a network of people that are going to help identify anybody who might be concussed. That actually starts out on the field and with the players themselves. 'This season about 41 percent of all concussion evaluations had some component of self report, meaning the player themselves spoke up and said, "You know what? I think I need to be checked out". That number has been pretty consistent for us over the past couple years. It's something we're very proud of. 'Concussions are different injury, right? You can't just tape it up, play through it. You need to be serious about it. 'We also teach our officials to be eyes and ears out on the field. Sometimes officials will bring a player off and say, "I think you need to check this player out. This is what I saw". 'We don't ask them to make a diagnosis. We just ask them that if they see or hear something that doesn't make sense, bring them off. That's why they're at that 60-minute meeting to know who to bring them off to. 'On the sideline you've got team doctors, athletic trainers, one unaffiliated neuro-trauma consultant. Those are doctors like me, a neurosurgeon, a neurologist, an emergency physician, somebody that treats brain and spine injury regularly. 'So any of those people can raise their hand at any time and say that player needs to be evaluated, and that's all it takes to activate the concussion protocol. 'How do you raise that suspicion? You need two things: a blow to the head or neck area and some kind of injury behavior. That's it. Injury behavior is being slow to get up, grabbing at the head, stumbling over other players, reporting headaches or dizziness or confusion or anything like that.' At this point, the league's strict concussion protocol is activated and players have to pass through a number of steps before they're allowed to return to the game. There are certain no-go signs and if anyone exhibits any of those, they are done for the day. A loss of consciousness, confusion, amnesia, ataxia, the fencing posture. All are red flags. If players don't have a no-go, then medics go through a checklist in the blue tent. 'When we come in here, we've got our own little room and everybody can calm down and relax in here, and I can get a really good exam,' says Sills, whose Injury Reduction Plan aimed at cutting concussions led to a 24 percent drop in them in its first year, 2018. 'I need concentration from you if I'm going to examine you and you just can't do that when the player's trying to watch the game or worrying about what's on TV. 'We'll go through that checklist, the unaffiliated neuro-doctor and team doctor, and examine the player. 'We often get asked why do you have both the team doctor and an unaffiliated neuro-doctor? Sometimes the only sign of a concussion is a personality change. 'A player might answer every question they pass, every test they do, everything the right way. But the athletic trainer will often speak up and say, "You know what? He just doesn't seem right to me. This is not who he normally is". 'What if they disagree? We ask them to discuss it and talk about it. It almost never happens. We do about 400-500 concussion evaluations a year, maybe one per year there's a disagreement. 'If they just can't reach an agreement, we always say go with the most conservative but I'm just telling you it almost never happens. It's usually pretty evident that it's going one way or the other.' If medics can't reach a conclusion in the blue tent, then every stadium is mandated to have a quiet space in each locker room for additional evaluations to take place. Sills can do a test in the blue tent in 90 seconds. In the locker room, it's 12 to 15 minutes. The privacy of the blue tent and locker room opens the door to skeptics about the involvement of coaching staff. Are they pushing for players to be cleared quickly or even when they shouldn't be at all? Sills vigorously denies there's ever any external input. 'I'll tell you this straight,' he says. 'Coaches don't interfere with this at all in any way. Even on game day, you never see a coach come up and say, "Hey doc, can you guys hurry up with him". 'That is a change of culture from 10 or 15 years ago, when there probably was some lobbying going on. But now, never happens, just never happens. The consequences for that are catastrophic to the team.' When dealing with potential concussions and brain injuries, it is important to be proactive instead of reactive, and the topic has become increasingly high-profile in recent years with prominent incidents involving star quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence and Patrick Mahomes. When the Miami Dolphins' Tagovailoa suffered a concussion against the Buffalo Bills last September it was the 26-year-old's third in the space of two years, resulting in him being forcibly stood down for four games. To rise to the issue, the NFL handed its medical staff the keys to Hawk-Eye in 2022. It means they have access to every camera in every stadium - which was as many as 100 for the Super Bowl - as they look for injuries in real time. Just yards away from the blue tent is an enclosed cabinet that houses a screen and headphones with a direct line to spotters sat high in the stands above. Within the 30 medical professionals at every game, there are people whose sole job it is to watch for injuries as the game unfolds. Crammed into a relatively small booth are two spotters (one for each team), a neuro-trauma consultant, two Hawk-Eye operatives and lots of screens. Part of the concussion protocol is that the team doctor and neuro-specialist must go to the cabinet and watch replays of the incident that led to the suspected injury. Those clips are found, edited and sent down to the screen in real time by the Hawk-Eye employee. It means they can see what they are dealing with just seconds after it happened. Sills explains: 'The great thing about the cart is two things. One, we've got dedicated video, which we can roll back look at different angles. Two, we've got noise canceling headphones so we can actually talk to each other and talk to the booth. 'It's a really good way to have a conversation with the folks in the booth and say, "Hey, what did you see up there? Show me a different angle. I want to see this". It can't be used by coaches. It can't be used by players. It is only there for the medical staff, and we use it a ton. 'It's just an incredibly helpful thing, not only for concussion, but other things. You'll have an offensive lineman come up and say, "I tweaked my knee. What happened? It kind of got rolled up on two plays ago." Okay, let's go look at that play. 'Video has been really transformative for us for injury identification. Sometimes a guy might say, "Oh no, I didn't get hit in the head. I got the wind knocked out of me". You go look at the videos like, boom, okay. He might not remember but there was a blow to the head.' Having that coverage means Sills and his team are able to debunk any only theories that Mahomes was concussed on the Chiefs' first drive in the Super Bowl. 'There was no indication of an injury to that player,' he said. Mahomes, who was forced off with a concussion during a playoff game in 2021 against the Browns, was sacked six times by the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans, as well as throwing two interceptions and losing a fumble. The spotters program was introduced in 2012 and their job is to cast their eye over the entire field. One is assigned to each team and they look for injuries. It may sound like a bleak job but it is invaluable to those providing the treatment on the field. To become a spotter, each individual must have at least 10 years' experience as an athletic trainer and had no involvement with an NFL team in the previous five years. They also cannot work on a game involving a team they have previously worked for. 'It is a busy, busy place and the men and women that work as spotters, I think, are unbelievably talented,' says Sills. 'They're extremely adept at watching the game, picking up the cues. They don't watch the game the way a fan does, right? They watch the game differently.' Spotters, who are marked out by the red hats they must wear in their booth, are told to look for more than just hard hits. If they looked back at every single one of those in an NFL game then the workload would be unmanageable. If there is no injury behavior, then they can do nothing. If they see injury behavior and play has stopped they'll call down to the medical staff to ensure that the concussion protocol is activated. But what about when they flag a player but there's no time to get them off before the next snap? Spotters are among a group of very few people with the ability to stop the game. They can break into the referees' communications system by pushing a button in the booth, which allows them to talk directly to the crew and demand they stop the game. That medical time out is unique in sport. Football is the only sport where a healthcare provider can stop a game just for health and safety reasons, if a player meets two specific criteria: the player is obviously disorientated and/or unstable, and is trying to remain in the game without medical attention. It happened 20 times in the 2024 season. Pushing the button and activating the concussion protocol is the perfect example of the NFL's game day medical team working in unison to help players when they need it most. 'It's an entire network,' Sills adds. 'From under the stadium to the sidelines to the video system to up here, that entire network is there. 'Everything we've talked about is every game: preseason, regular season, international, Super Bowl, whatever it might be. I couldn't be more proud of the men and women that serve in these roles. 'They are the backbone of what we do, and why we feel we are best in class. Are we perfect? No. Nobody's perfect in medicine. But we go to great lengths.