Chris Simms’ Exploding Spleen: An Analysis of NFL Injuries and One Very Mysterious Organ

Chris Simms, the son of former NFL great Phil Simms (who I once served a hamburger-he likes it on wheat bread with olives, no shit) and current quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, suffered a horrible injury recently in a close loss to the Carolina Panthers. This got me thinking, not so much about Chris Simms and whether or not he’ll be okay, but about NFL injuries in general… and that very mysterious organ of ours: the spleen. First, some words on Mr. Spleen…

When news of Chris Simms injury and emergency splenectomy spread, I did what most Americans did: I googled “spleen”. I just wanted to understand what the hell a spleen was and what it did. Amazingly enough, I had no such interest in this topic when my own spleen was under fire just a few years earlier (a horrific bout with mono). But now, I was all about the spleen. If spleen were crack and I was a crack junkie for a day, well…

And then the letdown came: the spleen is fairly unnecessary. I mean, it’s as unnecessary as any organ that can be removed without inducing death (it’s right above the appendix and right below one kidney in this regard). It’s not like the liver or the heart. If the spleen were a character on ‘Happy Days’ it would be Potsy.

What was even more upsetting was the fact that until recently we didn’t even know what the spleen did? How was this possible? In a day and age when so many things are possible, medically speaking, how did we go so long without understanding what one of our organs did? At this point, I didn’t even want my spleen. I was getting ready to sell it on EBay.

So I started to think about other weird NFL injuries to take my mind off my hatred for the spleen. And you know what, nothing really came to mind. I couldn’t think of a stranger NFL injury than Chris Simms’ exploding spleen. And I think this was a good thing. For as violent a sport as the football is, you’d think that stranger things would happen. Aside from the occasional paralysis incident, there’s really not a whole lot going on. Turf toe? I don’t even know what that is. In a way, it’s a good thing this happened to Chris Simms. Because instead of being known as Phil Simms’ kid, he might be recognized as the guy who played half of an NFL game with a ruptured spleen. And no matter what anybody says, there’s dignity in that.