Ricardo Lockette: "Am I about to die?"

[RazorStar 4,025]

http://www.theplayerstribune.com/am-i-about-to-die/

 

It's a pretty good read, so I'll just leave up a few choice quotes.

 

 

 

In that moment, I was completely helpless. You know what it felt like? Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? Imagine you wake up from a dream early in the morning, and you can hear everybody in your house making breakfast and talking and laughing, but you can’t move. No matter how hard you try, you can’t actually get up. You’re stuck in between being asleep and being awake.

So you just lay there, trapped inside your own body while the world goes on around you. That’s exactly what it felt like, except I wasn’t in bed. I was at the 50-yard-line of Cowboys Stadium, surrounded by 90,000 fans.

 

When I was taken to the hospital in Dallas, Marshawn stayed in my room with me the whole first night. This dude had me laughing so hard that he was putting my damn life in danger. I’m laying in bed with a full neck brace, just trying to stay still, and he’s just being Marshawn — talking to the nurses, making jokes, being crazy.

 

 

When I look back on my life, I’m not going to remember the Super Bowls the most. What I’m gonna actually remember is moments like that night in the hospital. Just the laughter and the love, even in the toughest moments. I mean, I’m laying there in a neck brace, I can’t move, I just cried my eyes out, and here’s a guy who just wants to make me laugh and forget about the pain.

Edited July 12, 2016 by RazorStar

[CampinWithaMissingPerson 2,025]

Had only seen the Marshawn stuff before this.

 

In that moment, I was completely helpless. You know what it felt like? Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? Imagine you wake up from a dream early in the morning, and you can hear everybody in your house making breakfast and talking and laughing, but you can’t move. No matter how hard you try, you can’t actually get up. You’re stuck in between being asleep and being awake.

So you just lay there, trapped inside your own body while the world goes on around you. That’s exactly what it felt like, except I wasn’t in bed. I was at the 50-yard-line of Cowboys Stadium, surrounded by 90,000 fans.

 

*shudders*

[SteVo+ 3,702]

Really great, sobering read. I never thought or wanted to think about removing punts from the game, even watching injuries like this on TV, but reading a first-person account of one really changes things. For me, at least.

[BJORN 679]

Great read, thanks for posting.

[BwareDWare94 723]

Lockette was a late-blooming player who was getting first team reps on the outside by that point in the season. He was big, fast, had a great catch radius, and seemed to be a big play waiting to happen when he got snaps.

Jeff Heath took all that hard work away. Intentional or not, that hit is textbook what not to do in that situation, and he ended a guy's career.

 

I don't know whether to feel bad for Heath for being just like Lockette in some ways--a hard, hard worker who had to earn every snap he's ever received, or to be angry with him and think he's a bit of a putz for being willing to make a hit like that in the first place.

[Cherry 1,302]

That type of hit happens all the time. Rarely do guys get nearly killed by it. Just a freak accident and a lesson for guys to not hit like that.