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Injuries, Poetry, and my YouTube Addiction

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I guess we’ll start with the most pressing issue over the weekend, the injury of Kevin Everett and how severe that was. To be honest with you, I was really worried. I prayed, but I didn’t expect it to be nearly as bad as it is now. I’ve heard different reports, some say that he’s going to have trouble breathing and he needs to fight for his life and that he won’t ever walk again.

Those things are upsetting. I didn’t expect it to be too bad, mainly because we’ve had a lot of stretchers the past few months around here. Which is not a good thing, but fortunately our guys came out OK, going all the way back to Al Wilson. Considering how long it took him to get off the field and they took him to the hospital, it was terrifying.

Just a week ago, Karl Paymah was in the same scenario. He wasn’t moving, and his hit seemed so much worse because it was right on top of the head. But I guess you can’t really tell by how hard it is, it’s more about the placement. We had Warrick Holdman in training camp get taken off on a stretcher, and it’s just too much.

We’ve obviously had a few really major tragedies, losing our players, so it’s a lot to deal with. Those are off-the-field things, which are a little different, but there’s nothing you can do to really protect yourself from those sort of things. They teach you to tackle properly, and sometimes with the speed of the game and the strength that the players have, those collisions happen. They happen all the time, and if it’s at that particular angle, it could be pretty dangerous. Like I said, we prayed and are continuing to pray for him, and you never want to see anything like that happen.

I do a radio show on 950 AM, The Fan, at 5:30 on Mondays, and we talked about the transition that football players, more than any other sport, have to make from a situation like that, where you’re just praying for a guy’s life and you know that he’s really in trouble because he hasn’t moved in 10 minutes, and then five minutes later, we’re all flying around smacking into each other again, putting yourself at risk. Obviously our jobs are not as important to society as that of a police officer or a member of the military (I know we have a lot of readers in the military and we appreciate them), but it kind of rivals that in the fact that when things are going on, you have a mission or a job that you have to do, and no matter what happens around you, it’s important to focus on the task at hand.

One of the ways I’m able to deal with something like that is to realize that I can’t do anything about it. Me grieving for the rest of the game isn’t going to make anybody feel any better, and me being scared of the same thing happening to me is just going to put me in more danger than if I play full speed. I think a lot of times you put yourself at more risk when you’re trying to avoid injury.

All that being said, that was a game full of terrible injuries. You had broken ankles and forearms, and I came out with an injury that is tremendously minor in comparison. I rolled my ankle in the second quarter, had kind of a sprain. I tried to come back and play, but I just couldn’t play on it after that, unfortunately. It’s really hard to watch a game when you’ve got your shoulder pads and your helmet on and you’re watching everybody fight. Especially a game like that, where it comes down to literally the last second. Every play that doesn’t go our way, you feel like you could’ve had something to do with it.

It’s really tough for me, especially since I’ve always been a pretty healthy guy. I’ve never missed a game or a practice or anything since I’ve been playing football since I was eight years old. Obviously playing a game you have lots of nicks and even fractures and things like that here and there, but nothing ever made me miss any time. I fully expect to be playing this weekend, and I’m going to do everything within my power to get back. I feel like I’m an important part of this team and I refuse to let anybody down.

And also, I hate treatment. Like I said, I’ve never been hurt before, so I never had to spend any time getting treatment on any level. It’s the worst thing ever. I really had a good relationship with our training staff prior to me getting treatment. We all got along, and I’d walk by and say, “Hey, how are you doing?” and shake hands every morning. I might spend 10 minutes in there talking to everybody, but now that I have to spend four or five hours in there, I don’t think they really like me that much anymore, just because I’m inquisitive. When they want me to do something, I’m asking, “Why?” I like to know what they’re doing and how this is helping me. I guess I asked some dumb questions, like, “If I can’t feel my toes, is that a good thing?” which I definitely think it’s not a good thing.

They love ice. Ice is one of the trainer’s best friends. But I try not to project my disgust with my injury onto them. I know that they’re trying to do what’s best for me, and I’m trying to do what’s best for me. We’re all on the same team, I just like to ask questions just to make sure we’re doing what’s best for me and in as short a time as possible, because Monday and Tuesday I’ve spent just as much time here as I do on Wednesday, which is not good. I need some time off.

But let’s move on from the injury stuff. This entry might be a little disjointed, because I have a lot of thoughts and I’ve made a lot of notes on the responses that I got. There’s never any smooth transitions in my blog. When I used to write for the Denver Post, I took a long time to write a pretty short piece, mainly because I wanted it to come off smooth and be written professionally because I knew it was going to be in the paper. Kids get to see it and I want them to recognize that I’m intelligent, and it’s important to me to come off that way. I would even hit up the thesaurus from time to time, which I don’t do now. This blog is me, 100 percent.

But I like big words. Everybody likes big words, I think. It makes you look smarter than you are, or maybe it makes you look as smart as you are. Except when you run across the many people who misuse words, which makes you sound really stupid, and it’s hard not to laugh. Some of my teammates misuse words from time to time. Most of us, I would say, are very intelligent people, but we have a field day whenever somebody messes up. I would share it, but I don’t know, I might lose some friends. I would share a couple of the funny phrases, but I might lose some friends.

I don’t think Mike Bell is my friend anymore because we do the 950 AM show at 5:30 on Mondays together, and I pretty much spent the whole time making fun of him. He got a little upset, but oh well. It’s good radio, it’s entertaining. I’m not going to try to do anything and not try to be the best. We’ve got to get the number of listeners up, and if it’s at Mike’s expense, oh well.

Anyway, the game was amazing, like I said earlier. It was a great win and something that we practice all the time. I was happy to see that type of enthusiasm. We celebrated like a college team. I would say in the grand scheme of things, the first regular season game is probably the least important of all the games. They get more and more important as you go. For us to be that into the game, it was exciting. You can only imagine how intense we’ll be when the playoffs come around.

I do appreciate all the support, although my responses have taken a severe dip to 47 from 70 a week ago. I guess I’ll take credit for last week’s blog not being as entertaining or not warranting as many responses. I also asked you guys to go check out Keela Harris’ blog. Hopefully I’m not losing any readership to Keela. That would make me upset. But you guys should continue to check out her blog and the rest of the blogs, because those people work just as hard as I do to give you guys insight. We really do enjoy getting the responses, it’s kind of a pat on the back and it’s a nice thank you, and it gives us something to talk about the next week.

Like I’ve said, a lot of my friends read the blog and the responses, and they love to find stuff to make fun of me about. Before, it was the sign off, and now they make fun because I get so much love, the way everybody talks about how high-character I am, how I’m a good guy off the field, setting a role model for kids. And I do appreciate all that stuff, but I am not perfect. I feel like I should give a list of all the things that are wrong with me so people don’t view me as some superhero.

I’m sure there are lots of people in my past that wouldn’t write as nice things about me as you guys do. Mostly women, probably. But I’m a perfectionist, most of the time. I have pretty high standards for myself, and that kind of spills over to all my relationships, friends and family. I get really disgusted sometimes with people who are around me and just put out poor efforts. I’m not as close with some of my high school friends, just because of that reason. I feel like I’m working so hard to get to places that I need to get to in life, and they’re still living in momma’s basement. We don’t see eye-to-eye, and that’s kind of bad, it kind of makes me a little judgmental. That’s one for the list.

I’m extremely confident, which could be considered borderline cocky possibly, which most of the time is attractive to people at first. But then they think, “Well, you really think you’re great.” But I mean, I work really hard, and I guess I could blame that on my mom. Somebody has to take responsibility for it. Her and my dad always instilled in me how smart they thought I was and how talented and good-looking… Well, good-looking is obvious. So I feel like that whole segment might bring in some anti-Domonique messages, just to keep my friends honest.

Man, I’ve got a lot of notes for this entry. I was in treatment all morning, just writing stuff because I was bored.

YouTube. I love YouTube. Jumbroncos88 referenced Soulja Boy and “Crank that Superman,” which is hilarious. For those who don’t know, Soulja Boy is a hip-hop artist and “Crank that Superman” is like a dance that goes to one of his songs, and I just found out about this whole phenomenon through YouTube about three or four weeks ago. YouTube is addictive. I get on there and just find stuff to laugh at for hours and hours, so I was watching that. Apparently there are spin offs. They’ve got the Batman, the Spiderman, and my personal favorite, “Crank that Grandpa.” They crack me up, they’re really entertaining and funny.

While I was on my last Youtube fix, I was checking out the clip of Miss Teen South Carolina. That’s great. I love it. That was hilarious, I laughed forever. And there are spin offs for that one, too. There was one on there that was animated. I laughed out loud. It was fantastic.

So if anyone has any good Youtube or viral videos in general, let me know. I will comment on them. I think I’m the king. I call Hamza Abdullah all the time and hook him up with whatever I’ve found or whatever anybody has e-mailed to me that’s really funny. So if anybody can think of something that I haven’t seen that’s pretty funny, I’ll be impressed.

I’ve picked back up my writing class on Tuesdays. Last week, Brian Clark was our special guest, and we did poetry. It was a really good time. Everybody who comes as a guest has to write and read, because the kids write and read at the end. All of the kids are really talented writers and the classes have helped them hone some of their skills, especially some of the artistic writing skills. Their poems were all really deep and impressive, and then Brian went last, and he did a poem about how much he loves chicken. So it was pretty funny.

It was an all-girls group before, but we’ve added a guy and I’m very happy about that, the integration of our writing group. I think that a lot of times just me being there and writing, not going into the gym, I think that the guys there recognize that. Now that we’ve had a guy join, that makes me excited.

I got a lot of love from the Montana Broncos fans this week, aaronb was one of them, and MontanaBroncoGirl. I appreciate that. And BradJamesBroncoFan, from Utah. Just want to thank them and give a shout out to Utah and all the Broncos fans around the world. We’ve got a bunch of people from Europe now. For those of you who don’t know, I was born in Oxford, England. My dad was in the military for 20 years. I’m surprised that we have football fans over there, soccer is so big. But we appreciate it and we love it. We want it to be a global sport at some point. I don’t know if football will ever make it to the Olympics though. It would be pretty dangerous for the other countries.

Cornersfan said he’s a 19-year old firecracker in response to the way I handled the situation with the grounds crew guy, saying that he might have went off. But it’s not worth it. Life’s too short. That’s my advice to cornersfan.

To be honest, he was really just doing his job, and he does a great job. I think we are voted one of the top playing surfaces in the NFL every year, due to their hard work. I honestly believe had I been home for that game, I wouldn’t have had the same injury, just because that turf grabs you and kind of assisted in the rolling of my ankle. So we definitely do appreciate him, and I kind of feel bad for all the bad press he’s gotten. I’ve heard through the grapevine that people have been messing with him a little bit. But anyway, I appreciate his hard work.

SivoCB24 quoted Lil Wayne, and I’m a big Lil Wayne fan, so I appreciate that. I guess you can add that to the list of bad things about me, possibly, because it kind of flies in the face of my message of go to college, because some of Lil Wayne’s lyrics are not always that pure. But I think I view music in the same way I view movies and TV. It’s entertainment, and a lot of times people want to blame rap or hip-hop music in general for things, but nothing that is said in a record is worse than what you see in movies or on TV. I feel like most of the artists are entertainers. They’re acting, they’re playing a part. No one is really that big of a thug or they’d probably be in jail, not making records. That’s one of the things that I preach when I’m with kids is to take a song the same way you would a television show. It’s fiction, don’t go out and simulate it. Although after I saw “Karate Kid,” I did think I was a karate master, so maybe that’s not good advice.

Jp86, a current Maryland Terrapin, just want to send out some appreciation for keeping up with me and the Terps. It’s been three years in a row that our bye week has fallen on the same week as Maryland’s, so I haven’t been able to get back to a game. But I always get back there and hang out, so on our bye week I’m going to try to get back the Maryland and D.C. area. Maybe I’ll run into you.

OrangeCrush_in_SANDIEGO, I really appreciate that little article excerpt about Darrent and my relationship. It’s powerful, motivational stuff, so thanks a lot.

To champrox24, tell all your friends that we are just normal people, we don’t need security guards, you are right. I guess her real name is Paris, so I appreciate the question.

So I guess that’s it. That’s a pretty long one, but I guess I had to come back strong after only 47 responses last week, so I’ll give you all some ammunition to get our responses back up. Keep checking out the other blogs, and I think I’m going to end it with a quote that coach Slowik used and has used before. It’s a Muhammad Ali quote:

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”

Oh, and I have to make one confession. I’ve started dictating the blog, so these are my words, but they are typed by somebody else. The mystery man, we’ll call him the “Blog Master.” So all these long blogs that I put out are not typed by me, they’re just dictated, so he deserves some accolades. Or just mess with him, which is what I do.


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