COLUMBUS, Ohio — Craig Wolfley knelt near his fallen Steelers teammate whose body was twitching involuntarily from a frightening collision in a training-camp drill four decades ago. The former guard, who played 12 NFL seasons, could see the fear in the young man’s eyes. He could hear him say, “I can’t feel my legs.”
The two-a-day practice in Latrobe came to a temporary halt as medical trainers rushed onto the field to treat a spinal cord injury.
“It’s one of those moments that takes your breath away,” said Wolfley, who declined to reveal the player’s name out of respect, but added that he made a complete recovery.
As the trainers tended to the stricken player and his shaken teammates processed the trauma, Chuck Noll ordered practice to resume.
“There was a pause and then Chuck moved the drill, and away we went,” Wolfley said.
Lest you think the Hall of Fame coach was an exceptionally callous individual, former defensive lineman Chris Long said he saw the same scenario repeat itself at other NFL training facilities.
“The tone gets set in practice,” said Long, a two-time Super Bowl winner with the Eagles and Patriots. “I can count plenty of times where a player had a major injury and we just moved the drill to another field.”
Such a hardened approach isn’t limited to the pros.
“When I went to Penn State, I wasn’t trained emotionally to play college football,” former Steelers center Jeff Hartings said. “The first time it happened, I was like, ‘are you serious?’ In high school, you hardly ever had injuries like that. In college and the pros, they happen all the time. You come to understand, 'what are they supposed to do, end practice?' ”
Hidden away from stadium crowds and national-television audiences, the scenes of distress are psychological conditioners for what awaits athletes on game days.
Next man up. Keep your head in the game. Sports can be cruel that way. Injury carts do a brisk business almost every week on NFL gridirons, and sometimes in NHL rinks, and they don’t discriminate between multi-millionaire superstars and players plumbing the depths of the roster.
We saw it again last Sunday night at Heinz Field as Seahawks defensive lineman Darrell Taylor momentarily lay motionless on the turf. Players from both teams were seen taking a knee. Some prayed. A few shed tears.
And before Taylor was driven down the tunnel on a cart and loaded into an ambulance, the game restarted in all of its violent glory. Little time to ponder a teammate’s welfare. No time to ease up on the next block or tackle.
How athletes are able to get right back into the heat of competition is among the most mentally challenging aspects of their profession. It’s one of the reasons why coaches are so quick to blow the whistle and “move the drill.”
Not that thoughts of mortality don’t creep into the minds of players who just witnessed a potential season-ending or life-altering injury.
“If you’re wearing a helmet, if you have pads on, you know but for the grace of God that could have been you,” Wolfley said.
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Seahawks defensive lineman Darrell Taylor is checked out by medical personnel Sunday night at Heinz Field.
By the time last Sunday night’s game concluded, the medical news on Taylor was encouraging. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said the player’s initial MRI and CT scans were clean. As of Friday, Taylor was dealing with a stiff neck, and he was hopeful of playing Monday night against the Saints.
But following the Steelers’ overtime win against the Seahawks, concern among players was palpable.
“Those are always very scary, real moments in football,” T.J. Watt said. “Sadly, you have to move on because the ball gets snapped really quickly once he’s carted off the field. That’s just the way it is. You mentally have to be able to compartmentalize what just happened and snap back into playing football.”
Neither Watt nor Ben Roethlisberger could shake the images of a similar scene that unfolded four years earlier in Cincinnati.
“Going through it with Ryan brought back a lot of memories,” Roethlisberger said. “It’s hard to refocus after something like that.”
Linebacker Ryan Shazier suffered a career-ending spinal contusion on Dec. 4, 2017 while making a tackle in the early minutes of a game at Paul Brown Stadium. Nobody on the field will forget the awful night as Shazier immediately reached for his back before rolling over and extending his arms to the heavens.
“I’ve never heard a sideline go so quiet,” said Wolfley, the Steelers’ radio analyst who was working as a sideline reporter four years ago. “I can still see the expression on Mike Tomlin’s face. You could tell it was a very grave situation. It’s one of those moments when everybody on the field is suddenly one team. Everyone is a teammate.”
The Steelers steadied themselves and rallied from a 17-point deficit to beat the Bengals, 23-20. Meanwhile, Shazier began a long road to recovery, reportedly enduring 130 rehab sessions that included in-patient therapy at UPMC Mercy and outpatient therapy at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex.
Five months later, Shazier walked across a stage at the 2018 NFL Draft to thunderous applause with his then-finance, Michelle, to announce the Steelers’ first-round pick. He now walks and jogs without assistance. It serves as a remarkable tale of perseverance — and a chilling reminder of how quickly a life can change.
“There is that sudden realization in the moment,” Wolfley said. “Football players tend to be 10-foot tall and bulletproof. We take the field and we’re armored up. You are wearing the uniform of a legacy team. You have that tendency to feel bulletproof, but everybody is mortal and there’s no telling when something like this can happen to you.”
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Bob Errey was among the first players to visit Kevin Stevens in a Pittsburgh hospital during the spring of 1993 after the former Penguins’ winger sustained horrific facial fractures in a collision with Islanders’ defenseman Richard Pilon in Game 7 of the Patrick Division Finals.
Errey, who had been traded to the Sabres earlier that season, saw the injury to his friend while watching the game on television in his Pittsburgh home. The harrowing scene was all too familiar. Over the course of his career as a player and a broadcaster, he’s witnessed stretchers wheeled onto the ice to retrieve injured players.
“You see guys go head first into the boards, and you’re just hoping they get up,” said Errey, a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Penguins. “You get glassy-eyed. You have a moment when your heart just sinks. You and me are talking right now, and I don’t know how to put it into words.”
When injuries occur in practice, teammates have some time to process them and ramp back to full speed. Wolfley said the Steelers essentially went through the motions for at least a half-dozen plays after the aforementioned 1980s spinal injury. Everyone was a bit tentative.
Players don't have that luxury in games. The next play could be the decisive one. As a player, Errey was able to corral his emotions and ready himself for his next shift. It’s an occupational hazard few fans can comprehend.
“I don’t know if we have been trained to block it out, or what but it’s part of an athlete’s makeup,” Errey said. “You gotta go out there, and you can’t play in fear. I always find when I’m not as engaged as I should be, that’s when things can happen. You have to be ready. It’s a tough balance of blocking out the mental anguish you just encountered and trying to put that in a spot in the back of your head until you are in a position to tackle it head-on emotionally.”
YouTube is littered with highlights of gruesome sports injuries. The leg breaks of Joe Theismann and Tim Krumrie are a mouse click away. So is the Stevens-Pilon collision.
Hartings doesn’t understand the morbid fascination with watching such videos. In 1997, he was on the sideline as his Lions teammate Reggie Brown suffered a career-ending spinal cord injury. Five years later, he was on the field as Steelers quarterback Tommy Maddox sustained a spinal contusion.
“I don’t want to see those replays,” he said. “People want to show me highlights of bad injuries and I don’t want to see them. I’ve had some of those injuries and I’ve had friends that have had them, too. A lot of athletes don’t want to be reminded of that stuff.”
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Ben Roethlisberger is carted to the locker room during a 2015 game at Heinz Field.
Mike Logan felt the pop in his right knee moments after making the biggest play of his career — a game-saving interception in the 2002 AFC postseason contest between the Steelers and Browns.
Even as the Steelers defensive back started running with the ball, he sensed he was doing more damage to his leg. Logan was right. He would require surgery to repair cartilage, the lateral collateral ligament, a tendon and a muscle. He also tore his hamstring on the play.
But as the Steelers’ medical staff tended to him on the muddy track at Heinz Field, Logan refused a ride on the injury cart. It was important to him that he walk off the field, albeit with assistance.
“You instantly start thinking of your family,” Logan said. “They know what you signed up for. They understand the risk. They know it’s a violent game and it’s physical, but when you get injured and you’re lying down on the field, you want to do everything you can to ensure their comfort. I knew exactly where my parents were sitting. I didn’t want them or my friends or my teammates seeing me go off on a cart.”
Fans, and even some players, become desensitized by the steady stream of carnage. TV broadcasts cut to commercials. Spectators grab another beer or check their cellphones for fantasy-league updates. Many buy into the gladiator-in-the-coliseum spectacle.
But the sight of a spine board and an injury cart often snaps people back into reality. Former Chargers team doctor David Chao said player-safety always is paramount when tending to injuries. He also understood the psychological impact associated with the cart, and if he could get a player safely to the locker room without using one, he recommended that option.
“There’s a tremendous emotional toll to putting somebody on a spine board for the family watching in the stands and for the player himself and for his teammates,” Chao said.
Former Browns left tackle Joe Thomas could not stop crying during a 2014 win over the Steelers after witnessing teammate Alex Mack break his leg. Minutes after Mack was carted from the field, Thomas continued to shed tears in the huddle.
Long said some players are more spooked by the graphic sight of fractures and lower-leg dislocations than spinal cord injuries.
“Seeing a guy’s leg turned the wrong way can be very unsettling to some guys,” he said.
Wolfley prided himself on the warrior mentality so prevalent in the NFL. He never rode on a cart despite tearing a hamstring and cracking a bone in his ankle. He once suffered a concussion and walked around in a circle before falling down. Even then, he waved off the medical chariot.
Thirty seasons removed from his last game, Wolfley has peeled off the armor and scaled back the tough-guy image. He was working the sideline for a Steelers’ broadcast 10 years ago when a “three-car collision” happened right in front of him. As trainers administered to the injured players, Wolfley called up to his late friend and former teammate Tunch Ilikin in the radio booth during a commercial break.
“Off the air, I said to Tunch, ‘Did we really used to do this? Or did we just dream it? Because this seems way too violent for us,’ ” Wolfley recalled. “We were mortal again — out of the game, out of the gladiators’ arena. You learn to accept your own mortality.”
And no longer have to deal with the emotional toll of moving the drill.
