Houston Texans players talk about Gary Kubiak’s health scare
By Mike Dyce
On Sunday night Houston Texans head coach Gary Kubiak collapsed on the field as he headed into the locker room at the end of the second quarter. It wasn’t clear what was wrong at first, but it was clear that it was serious.
“Pretty scary sight. I was pretty nervous coming in for halftime,” tackle Duane Brown said, via the team’s website. “We got the word that the paramedics were out there around him, so I kind of walked back and saw him on the ground. Just confused. Like I said, kind of scared. We quickly got the word that he was okay and he was stable. That was a big sigh of relief for us.”
Brown said it was hard to focus on the second half of the game.
“We were a bit concerned to hear it at halftime,” Brown said. “It was kind of tough to completely focus on our game plan and what to try to expect in the second half. But like I said, once they gave us the word that he was starting to improve, he was doing a little better, we took it as motivation. We wanted to be motivated to go out and play harder in the second half, but we didn’t really think about it too much.”
“When you’re on a team, it’s kind of like your family. He’s the leader. He’s the leader of our family,” wide receiver Andre Johnson said. “It definitely bothers you, something like that. I wasn’t out on the field when it happened. You hear a coach is down, you’re wondering like, ‘What’s going on?’ Because the coaches are not out there playing. When you hear Coach has gone down, you‘re thinking it’s something real serious. It’s very nerve-racking.
Some have speculated that it could’ve been a result of the stress of being an NFL coach.
“I have no idea what the medical correlation is, but I know that this is an extremely difficult profession,” defensive end J.J. Watt said. “Obviously, being a head coach in the National Football League, you have a lot of stress, you have a lot of weight on your shoulders. Coach Kubiak’s one of the hardest working guys I know and his truck’s always the first one here and the last one to leave. The guy lives for it, and he lives and breathes this game. He puts it all out there for us and obviously we hope to get him back soon.”