The scary-looking injury suffered by Panthers guard Chandler Zavala proved not to be overly serious.
Zavala was down for several minutes during today’s game and was taken to a Detroit hospital, but he has been cleared to travel home with the team. Teammates expressed relief after the game and said Zavala assured them before he was stretchered off the field that he was going to be OK.
“That’s the scary part of what we do,” center Bradley Bozeman said, via Darin Gantt of Panthers.com. “When a guy like Chandler goes down, and he’s sitting there, they’re taking the facemask off and getting the cart out, it’s scary. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to move on; you’ve got to log back in. “He was like, ‘Hey, go get this,’ so we knew he was good. But just trying to keep fighting and trying to just lock back into the moment. It’s always a feeling of relief whenever they say something back, or they give the thumbs up or whatever it is. He did that, and you know, he was letting us know that he was cool.”
Zavala is a fourth-round pick who has earned a starting job as a rookie. There’s been no word on whether he’ll need to miss any time.
