NFL referee Adrian Hill was carted off the field after suffering a non-contact injury during Thursday night’s game between the Bills and Texans.
In the middle of the third quarter, Hill was positioned in the end zone and was seen jogging to follow a play when he pulled up, grabbing at his left leg and grimacing in pain.
Members of the Texans’ medical staff came out to check on Hill and helped him to the sideline.
Hill appeared to be standing on the sideline momentarily before a cart was brought to him, and he was taken down the tunnel to the back of NRG Stadium.
The injury led to a shift in how the game was officiated.
With Hill out, umpire Roy Ellison took Hill’s white hat to serve as the referee for the remainder of the game.
“They’re going to move the umpire to the referee position, and they are going to eliminate the umpire position,” Prime Video rules analyst Terry McAulay explained on air. “So [Ellison] will work the entire offensive backfield by himself moving forward. Everyone else will have their normal positions.”
The Texans led the game at the time of the injury, 20-16.
Hill is known not just for his officiating, but for his other job as a rocket scientist.
The Bowie, Md., resident has a background in software engineering and has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. In 2006, has was tabbed as the Engineer of the Year by the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
In a 2020 piece in The Athletic, Hill joked that he had the “moniker” of a rocket scientist, “but the true rocket scientist would probably be offended.”
“We have scientists and engineers,” he said then. “The engineers are the ones that build stuff and the scientists are the ones who analyze the results. I’m on the engineering side of the fence.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
