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| Associated Press |
However, hat realization was almost derailed to the Dallas Cowboys star by a neck injury suffered in 2009 against the San Diego Chargers.
During a recent interview with GQ magazine, Ware came clean about his fears from that fateful night.
You never think that you’ll be the guy who’s on the stretcher. It’s usually a special teams guy, because they have those big impact hits. But the guys on offense and defense, we don’t have enough speed built up to have that impact. When I went down, everything just stopped. I thought, “Why am I here?” I actually thought that my body was moving. I thought I was moving my arms, I thought I was moving my legs. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t move. Mentally, I was moving. But physically, I wasn’t. I’m sitting there, just thinking. I was thinking, “I’m that guy.” Everyone was watching me, just lying there, unable to do anything. I felt embarrassed, actually. They strapped me up, and I wasn’t able to move my neck or arms or legs, but I said, “I’m alright. I’m alright.” Then it finally hit me when they took my facemask off. When they took that facemask off, they took something out of me.
“I was so scared. I started thinking about my family. I thought, ‘I might have to give football up.’”
“I really thought I might have to retire, because I just couldn’t imagine going through something so traumatic again.”
Ware never missed a game and went out the next week and had a pretty amazing game in a win against the then-undefeated New Orleans Saints.
That was three years ago. The all-time sack record is still attainable.
Glenn Erby is a NFL writer for FootBasket. He also owns the NFL blog, Tha Cover 2. You can read more about him over there. Follow him on Twitter @thacover2.
