It’s almost impossible to go an entire football game without seeing at least one player go down with some sort of injury.
Whether it’s something minor that keeps them out for a few plays or something major that ends their season or even their career, football players take the field knowing it could be the last time they step foot on the field.
Back on November 1, 2015, Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Ricardo Lockette was involved in a play that changed his life.
After taking a blind-side hit from Dallas Cowboys safety Jeff Heath, Lockette was carted off the field. The next day, the team announced his season was over after he suffered neck ligament damage and was going to need season-ending surgery.
Lockette announced his retirement from the NFL less than one year later, and said that his injury was 50% of the reason why he decided to call it quits.
Last week, the 31-year-old Super Bowl champion was speaking at the Washington Fire Chiefs Conference in Spokane, where he got a surprise visit from the two paramedics who were working that night and saved his life as he could have died moments after the hit.
“The doctor told me that pretty much my skull, all the muscles, all the ligaments that connect my vertebrae and the cartilage between that — so the cartilage is out, the ligaments torn. He said if I would have stood up then, the weight of my head, left, right, front, back, I would have died,” Lockette described during the event.
Lockette couldn’t help but burst out into tears after he noticed Deputy Chief Gerald Randall and Engineer Paramedic John Robertson in attendance. Without any hesitation, he went right over to the two men and thanked them from the bottom of his heart for what they did for him that day.
(H/T Facebook/Keith Osso kxly)
