As Seahawks fly home Gavin Heslop stays back in Houston hospital, may have leg surgery

The brutality of football is especially brutal for Gavin Heslop.

The 24-year-old reserve defensive back is the last player to join the Seahawks’ roster. He got there Friday, for depth. Seattle signed him as an undrafted rookie free agent from lower-division Stony Brook in 2020.

Sunday was his third NFL game.

It could be his last.

Playing only because coaches were resting Pro Bowl veteran free safety Qaundre Diggs at the end of Seattle’s 33-13 win over the Houston Texans, Heslop sustained a serious leg injury on a play he wasn’t really in, with just 59 seconds remaining in the game. He was standing with his legs straight and firmly planted in the artificial turf at NRG Stadium when Nico Collins rolled onto the bottom of his left leg, as Seattle teammate Bless Austin finished a tackle of the Texans wide receiver on a reception away from Heslop.

Heslop’s leg appeared to snap as he collapsed to the turf. He stayed down for minutes. Paramedics came to put on what appeared to be a inflatable cast on his left leg. A motorized cart came onto the field.

As he sat on the back of it, Diggs came over to shake Heslop’s hand. Quarterback Russell Wilson tapped him on the left shoulder.

Heslop dropped his head into his gloved, right hand as the cart drove him from the field.

Heslop went to a Houston hospital. Coach Pete Carroll said Heslop was to remain at the hospital into Monday. The team flew back to Seattle without him Sunday night.

“He was really hurting,” Carroll said. “We send our hearts and our love and everything. We are going to try to send him good stuff.”

The coach said there is “a good chance” Heslop will need surgery to repair and stabilize the leg.

The Seahawks kept a member of its athletic-training staff and another member of its public-relations department in Houston with Heslop Sunday night. Normal procedure for Seattle in cases such as these — serious medical situations after games in Dallas with wide receiver Darrell Jackson and Ricardo Lockette in past seasons, for instance — would be for team chair Jody Allen to send her private jet to bring Heslop home with the two team staffers later this week, after doctors in Houston stabilize and, it appears, operate on him.

It’s an awful injury for any player, in what is a brutal sport.

For Heslop, who turned 24 last month and gets limited chances to show where his place may be among those drafted and established players ahead of him on Seattle’s roster, it creates odds longer than his already were. His contract to be on the 53-man active roster wasn’t guaranteed beyond this week, let alone this season into next year.

Now he may be facing an indefinite span of recovery and rehabilitation before he can play again.

Heslop joined the roster from the practice squad Friday days after another safety, Pro Bowl veteran Jamal Adams, had season-ending shoulder surgery. Diggs had usual sixth, dime defensive back Ryan Neal starting next to him instead of Adams on Sunday.

General manager John Schneider said on the Seahawks’ radio network’s pregame show Sunday the surgeon who operated on Adams’ shoulder estimated he will have a five-to-six-month recovery.