It was the last football play of my life.
I knew it would be my last game; I saw no future in it for me – only finality. We were a sub-500 Division III team ending the season on a low note. So deeper meaning largely escaped me.
With less than 3 minutes to go, we were down 20-3, and the other team had all their subs, scrubs, and seniors playing instead of their starters. In the defensive huddle, our SAM spit blood onto the ground. He had lost his mouthguard a few plays back and bit his lip during a tackle. I remember pulling my foot out of the way; for some reason I didn’t want to get my weathered shoe bloody. We broke the huddle and I laughed at myself: why should I care? I was going to throw those cleats away before nightfall.
The offense lined up in an inverted wishbone. I was Rover–a strong safety who could line up in a number of different places, depending on the offensive formation and down/distance. Our SAM set up on the inside shoulder of the tight end, acting like he was going to rush. I bounced around his outside shoulder a yard off the line, faking like I would blitz, too. The QB took the snap and after a half step forward, the SAM and I both dropped into coverage–he dropped to his hook zone, and I zoomed toward the flat.
Sure enough, the tight end looked to block someone, but no one was engaged with him. The offensive line stuttered, then let the defensive rush through. The strong-side halfback snuck forward, and I felt like the rest of my team knew with as much certainty as I exactly where the ball was going.
The backup playing QB didn’t have a speck of dirt or grass stain on his uniform, and for all I know hadn’t played in a game before this one. He was hyped up, and his pass rainbowed way too high, over halfback and over even the linemen setting the center screen. Our SAM caught the overthrow against his shoulderpad, took one step and caught the arm of one of the offensive linemen, who was diving to make the tackle.
I knew that fireplug of a SAM, all 5’10” and maybe 230lbs, could break that arm tackle. The play had started from about their 20 yard line; there was a chance we could actually score on defense! one last burst of glory. I saw the tight-end in his pristine jersey, still not engaged with anyone, and knew my SAM would need help getting past. I ran to block so my SAM could score.
I popped the tight-end and tried to drive him as I felt my cleats catch in the cold turf. In spots, the mud was half-frozen and plastic.
And then my SAM broke the tackle, but not clean. He fell into my right leg. All 230 lbs of him, right into the side of my knee. Somehow everything was moving slowly enough that I felt him hit, and knew the only way I wouldn’t blow my knee out would be to collapse it, so I did.
But my cleats were stuck in the mud and grass, and could not release–especially with my weight, the goon tight end’s weight, and now 230 lbs of linebacker pushing everything down.
I felt the bones grinding together in my ankle and screamed, but that didn’t help, and the pain didn’t end. What I remember the most was the feeling of tension–of things being pushed and pulled in ways they aren’t supposed to go–and a grinding that sounded in my brain like massive stone blocks being dragged over each other. I remember squeezing my eyes shut and seeing bright red against the backs of my eyelids, despite the late-afternoon shadows on the field.
The next thing I knew, I was crawling off the field, refusing to look back. I was certain my foot had been ripped off my leg, and at best was dragging behind me by my sock… but more likely, it had been pulled clean off and was still stuck in the turf. The pain was immense, but the fear was even bigger. How long before the amputated foot couldn’t be reattached?
I got to the sideline and I guess I was whimpering something about my foot being gone, and before the trainers got to me, someone told me no, everything’s still attached.
“Is it hanging there limp?” I asked, still not bearing to look.
No, they reassured me. Looks like it’s pointing the right direction and everything.
The trainers got me into a seated position and I risked a look. It was already swelling, and they cut my shoe off, but it didn’t look as hideous as it had felt when it happened. It was bad–very bad–but I wasn’t going to lose my foot.
I didn’t find out until much later that the interception had been for nothing. The game ended 20-3.
For years, I avoided the fate my original ortho predicted–that the bone was degenerating and within 10 years I would need my lower leg unzipped from both sides and a graft from my hip put into the tibia.
But this past spring, my new ankle doc gave me the bad news from a new MRI. Next week I get a bone graft in the talus, and cadaver cartilage to replace all the stuff that got ground away 33 years ago.
This is the price we pay for fleeting glory on the gridiron – in a forgotten game at the end of a meaningless career, on a frozen field. The last time I took off my helmet wasn’t some moment of meaning that I kept crystallized in my memory; I tore it off and tossed it aside while injured and never saw it again.
My buddy and I had a saying: “broken bones heal; pain is temporary; chicks dig guys with scars.” I add another one to the collection in June.
