Football is a contact sport. All over the field, there are collisions. Most of the time, the players involved get up. Sometimes they don’t. During Sunday’s win over the Oakland Raiders, perhaps the most brutal hit came when Denver Broncos linebacker Zaire Anderson ran into his own player. On this play, it was actually Anderson that took the brunt of the punishment.
“I just ran into one of the players,” explained Anderson. “One thing I remember is I was trying to get up and I couldn’t and I couldn’t feel my arms and legs at all.”
After the play, Anderson was strapped onto a stretcher, placed on a cart and driven from the field. He was immediately placed into an ambulance and taken to a nearby hospital.
“At first, I could feel my hands starting to come back a little bit, but my legs still felt numb,” he said. “When I got in the ambulance my legs started to come back, too. It’s a blessing.”
Having suffered a neck injury, things could have been a whole lot worse for Anderson. According to the doctor, he is expected to make a full recovery.
“He said I’m fine,” said Anderson of the doctor. “He said that everything is starting to come back, but that I am going to feel tingly, a tingly feeling in my shoulders.”
Once he gets all the feeling in his extremities back, Anderson will turn his focus to the offseason, where he has a couple of goals.
“I’m going to try to gain weight, get stronger and get faster. That’s the goal right now.”
