WATCH: Deion Sanders shares that CU QB Shedeur Sanders received an injection during halftime of their game vs. UCLA. (Video by BuffsTV/YouTube)
BOULDER– The University of California, Los Angeles Bruins defense found their biggest success on Saturday by getting as many rushers on Shedeur Sanders as they could, who were met with little resistance from the Colorado offensive line.
In the Buffaloes’ match against the Bruins, Sanders was sacked, shoved, or hit a total of 23 times out of 50 passing attempts– almost 50% of the plays that he dropped back to throw.
With the clear beating Sanders took in the first half, it was clear that he had suffered some kind of injury from the volume of hits he had taken. In the postgame press conference, Coach Prime shed light on this to open his presser.
“Offensively, we have to improve,” Coach Prime said. “You see that the quarterback is taking a beating. He got an injection at halftime just to block some of the pain– I probably shouldn’t tell you that but you know I’m 100.”
In a 2016 story with ESPN, staff writer and former NFL player Matt Bowen detailed the measures that college and professional training staff take before resorting to the injections that Prime referred to.
Midgame injuries of course don’t have to be identifiable after a play, and in Sanders’ case, it wasn’t entirely obvious he was injured at any point in the half. Rather, he was likely evaluated during halftime on his condition to see if he’d be able to play through the second half.
Where pain injections are a last resort before game day, at this point in the match, it would have been the only option for Sanders to continue to take hits and play through them.
To block the pain for the rest of the game, medical staff give players Ketorolac Tromethamine, or Toradol, a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug, which is permitted at the NCAA and NFL level. Toradol is an anti-inflammatory like Ibuprofen, yet it’s taken in injection form in the lower thigh and acts in minutes at a stronger degree.
Toradol’s main side effect is that the pain will return worse than before since the original injury was played through, and players are advised to take two days off after games to rest, which Prime alluded to in the press conference.
Toradol remains a controversial topic in the sports medical field and routinely comes up as an issue every couple of years.
For example, a local news publication released an article in 2009 on the University of South Carolina Gamecocks detailing the excessive use of the drug during the past season.
“South Carolina administered 169 Toradol injections to players on game days over the 13 games of the 2008 season,” the article read.
A couple of years later, the team doctor for the University of Southern California Trojans admitted to ignoring FDA regulations on the weekly limit of Toradol injections in favor of dulling pain on Saturdays according to Vice.
Most recently, an interview with Calvin Ridley from The Players Tribune in March of 2023 revealed that the Atlanta Falcons medical staff downplayed his broken foot injury in 2020 and prescribed him Toradol so he could play through it every week.
Indeed Ridley did not miss a game of the 2020 season and spent the offseason and twelve weeks of the following season recovering from what Ridley had suspected, a broken foot.
The NCAA has responded to these incidents several times and made a serious push in 2015 in response to the USC situation with the help of independent research journals and institutions at the time showing Toradol’s misuse in the NFL. No regulation has been made at either professional or collegiate level as of now, and the conversation has become increasingly silent since Calvin Ridley’s article.
With how little transparency organizations give to how many injections they administer per game, the NCAA cannot definitively condemn the misuse of Toradol in the league and has yet to announce any regulations on the pain-numbing drug.
It’s unclear whether this is the last use of an injection on Sanders. Yet as Coach Prime has expressed his doubt in regards to improving the offensive line by the end of the season, it may be in Colorado’s best interest for the training staff, coordinators, and Sanders himself to prepare for further measures to limit Sanders' pain over the next few games, all of which against high ranked blitzing defenses.
Cover photo by Talus Schreiber/Sko Buffs Sports
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