Utley’s Injury Serves as a Scary Reminder : Pro football: After Detroit Lion’s broken neck results in paralysis, Chargers who have felt the sensation of “stingers” count their blessings.
SAN DIEGO — Safety Stanley Richard has the reputation of being a fearless, hard hitter, but Wednesday he stood shaken in front of his Charger locker, and admitted, “I’m scared.”
Richard went down hard Sunday with a neck injury, and the pain, he said, has moved now “deep down his spine.”
Detroit offensive lineman Mike Utley and Cleveland wide receiver Danny Peebles also suffered serious neck injuries Sunday, and their condition has attracted national attention.
Peebles was hospitalized, but he is expected to recover. Utley remains paralyzed from the chest down.
“I thank God I’m able to walk today; they both went down to the ground and were paralyzed,” Richard said. “I took the full blow in the neck and what was stopping the same thing from happening to me? My right side went numb. If you can’t feel part of your body, but it’s there, and you’re looking at it, that’s scary.
“I just have so many questions, and I don’t have the answers.”
The Chargers listed Richard on their injury report Wednesday for Sunday’s game in New York with the Jets as “probable” with a “shoulder” injury. They expect him to play.
Professional football players routinely suffer “stingers” or “burners” after stretching or pinching the nerves that run from their necks to their shoulders. “Try placing your arm in a fire and that’s how it feels,” Charger H-back Steve Hendrickson said.
Players are taught beginning in Pop Warner football to keep their heads up when tackling, but the breakneck pace of the pro game doesn’t always allow for form-perfect contact.
“You might get 20 or 30 stingers in a season, especially if you go through a full training camp,” Charger nose tackle Joe Phillips said. “Your neck takes such abuse; it’s a collision sport.”
Richard, however, had never felt the shooting pain of a burner or stinger before Sunday. He had also never heard of Utley.
“I love the game and all that, but I’d like to know more about my situation before going into contact again,” he said. “The first couple of days the pain was in my shoulder, but now it’s down my spine.
“You could be paralyzed for life. . . . I think I’m going to talk to the trainer and see if I can get X-rayed. The pain is down my spine, and seeing those other guys go down, reading about it in the papers . . . I’m concerned.”
Former Charger linebacker Chuck Faucette heard about Utley’s misfortune while watching Monday Night Football. “First thing I thought of was, ‘Wow, I guess I’m lucky.’ ”
It’s been more than three years since Faucette suffered a broken neck while playing for the Chargers, and until now, he has considered himself to be “one of the most unlucky men to have ever walked the face of the earth.
“I’m still not over it,” he said. “It’s still hard for me to watch the Chargers play.”
Faucette is walking, however, and working as linebacker coach for Hamilton in the Canadian Football League.
“Utley, from what I’ve read, broke his sixth cervical vertebra, and it touched his spinal cord,” Faucette said. “I broke my C-1 vertebra; if my break had touched the spinal cord, I would have been dead.
“Most C-1 injuries occur in car accidents; sometimes they call it, ‘the hangman’s break.’ You get hung, you break the C-1 and die. My C-1 broke completely in half; it was amazing, it must have been the perfect shot to the head to make it split like that. My neck muscles were so strong, though, and they locked up and kept the C-1 from touching the spinal cord. They kept me from dying.”
Faucette was no different from any other player in the Charger locker room. He lifted weights, he worked hard to make himself into a starting linebacker, and he dived into piles to stop the opposition.
“I’ve watched the play over and over again,” he said. “It’s like any other play. I’m trying to dive low to tackle Eric Dickerson, there’s a pile and Joe Phillips falls on me. To this day I still can’t understand how I broke my neck. I had probably hit somebody just like that 100 times. I know I’ve hit people harder and nothing happened.”
Phillips has read every story about Utley. Like so many other big, powerful men in the Charger locker room, he has been reminded of his own vulnerability.
“We think we’re not going to take those hellacious collisions as linemen,” Phillips said. “Our necks are like 21 and 22 inches and we figure they’re going to absorb the shock. We think of full-speed collisions between 220-pound defensive backs and 180-pound wide receivers with pencil necks.
“You figure those are the people that are going to sustain serious injuries. Evidently, that’s not true.”
Utley, a 6-foot-6, 279-pound guard, was blocking Ram defensive tackle David Rocker when he stumbled and took a nose dive. Rocker, who had leaped into the air to try and knock down a pass, landed on Utley’s head.
“It’s frightening and my sympathy goes out to the kid,” Phillips said. “Anybody who has gotten to this level has had stingers in their neck. You know what that feeling is, but this? He’s got to be scared out of his mind.
“I think anyone who chooses not to think about something like this is ridiculous. That’s why there are injury policies. Honestly, that’s why I have a degree of concern for (Gary) Plummer with the neck trouble he’s had. He’s got a family that depends on him.”
Plummer’s family was sleeping in the early hours Monday, but Plummer was still pumped up from Sunday’s 24-21 victory over New Orleans. He was watching television, and he saw Utley being carried from the field on a stretcher.
“You’re sitting there by yourself and it kind of sets you back,” Plummer said, “and makes you reflect on the importance of the game.”
The game is Plummer’s livelihood. He loves to play the game, works harder than most, and now his career is coming to an end.
“To me, it’s like with my mom when I first started to play football,” he said. “It’s just one of those things, you’re going to get hurt. That’s the name of the game. . . . I realize later in life I’m going to have arthritis in my neck.
“But I want to get the most out of it. This is the way I feed my family. I’m hoping to play two more years after this, and if I can do that, then my family will be basically set for life.”
Plummer, however, has been bothered by a sore neck since training camp, and this past week it’s become more painful. He could move his neck to the left Wednesday for the first time since Sunday, but still, there was pain.
He underwent tests in August, and doctors pronounced his neck structurally sound, but then Plummer, who has been the team’s leading tackler for the past three years, continues to run into people on a weekly basis.
“I just lead with my head,” he said. “I’m not the biggest guy out there. Something has to give. . . . I don’t even think I could count all the stingers--maybe 50, 60.
“I bought a neck machine five years ago and my neck is 20 1/2 inches. I’ve built my pads up. I do what I can, but things happen.”
The Chargers require each player to lift weights twice a week during the season, and they begin with neck exercises.
“The first thing we tell our players when they come in as rookies,” said John Dunn, the team’s strength and conditioning coach, “is if you are going to learn one thing, strengthen your neck. It’s something we’re always preaching: ‘Pull a pec and you can still play; hurt your neck and you’ll be sipping soup in a wheelchair.’
“Using Plummer as an example, no one can probably do more than he has done to prepare himself. Yet he still has a problem. You can’t prevent it, but you can minimize the problem. If he didn’t train as hard, he’d probably be out six to eight weeks.”
The first man on the field to administer to an injured player is Charger trainer Keoki Kamau. In 1987, while working for the Redskins, he rushed to an injured David Jones, and discovered the center was paralyzed from his neck on down.
“Luckily it was only a spinal cord contusion and everything went well in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” Kamau said. “But he retired from football the following week.
“I expect neck injuries, but not like that (to Utley). Injuries are part of this game. Everybody on this football team is going to get hurt. The number one killer, however, is poor technique. You put your head down, and your spine is in its weakest position.”
“I’m thankful every time I’m able to walk off the field,” linebacker Billy Ray Smith said.
New England wide receiver Darryl Stingley was unable to walk off the field after being hit by Jack Tatum in 1978, and he remains paralyzed from the neck down. San Francisco safety Jeff Fuller suffered a spinal injury that left him with only partial use of his right arm in 1989.
Charger offensive linemen Gary Kowalski and John Clay prematurely ended their careers after suffering serious neck injuries. Faucette was the team’s leading tackler in 1988 when his career came to an abrupt halt.
“It’s one of those one-in-a-million things,” Faucette said. “And it happened to me.”
Utley is 25; he was 32 games into his promising professional career when he became the next one-in-the-million victim.
“The way it happened, it could happen to anybody,” said guard Mark May, who wears double-padded shoulder pads with a collar bar. “It’s just like the ignorance of believing that you can play forever and you’re not going to get hurt. It happens, and when it does, everybody has to take a step back, knock on wood and realize how fortunate they really are.”
