Get up, Al.
Cheering in the press box is strictly forbidden. But, sometimes, between snaps of the football, when nobody else is looking, you can sneak in a little prayer.
As Broncos linebacker Al Wilson lay nearly motionless on the frozen grass for the worse part of 10 anxious minutes Sunday night, with his fingers as numb as a dead man’s and Denver teammates afraid to look, everybody with a heart in the stadium whispered the same plea:
Get up, Al.
As medical personnel strapped the eighth-year pro to a stretcher, placed him on a cart and motored him off the field after a wicked pileup in pursuit of a fumble, it was impossible not to hear Wilson’s voice, describing the NFL’s nastiest, most dangerous situation.
“Say you put a bunch of rats in a box and drop a snake in there,” Wilson explained recently, painting a vivid, ugly picture of the anything-
goes, lawless pile of steaming anger that results from large men pouncing on a loose football. “Them darn rats are going to be squirming, trying to get out of there.”
As referees sorted through the carnage in search of the ball after a fumbled punt early in the fourth quarter of a game between Denver and Seattle, one player, No. 56 in a Broncos uniform, was trapped like a rat at the bottom of a stinking box.
Who didn’t pray?
Get up, Al.
While a desperately needed victory and a fading season slipped away, it was impossible for the Broncos not to be distracted by thoughts of their emotional leader being transported to a hospital.
“You could feel it on the sideline. I mean, I was affected by it,” Broncos coach Mike Shanahan said Monday. “When a guy sits there and he can’t feel his fingers and he’s got something that he’s never felt before and watching him there for about 10 minutes, yeah, you’re concerned for a guy’s health.”
There is no cheering in the press box, which, on a good night, is a heady mix of caffeine, irreverent humor and newspaper deadline pressure of the unpredictable drama found when the city’s collective mood hangs on the flight of a 50-yard field goal as the scoreboard clock ticks toward zero.
The resulting adrenaline rush, not the outcome of the game, is what hooks a sports reporter on the job. Fans are forever amazed, and often dismayed, to hear I honestly don’t care if the Broncos reach the Super Bowl or miss the playoffs. But hang around any team for years, and you begin to understand why some players win so much respect from their teammates.
Wilson is one of those players. He hits everything hard. Ball carriers. Any hot topic of debate. Life.
We get 80 years on earth, if we’re lucky. You know Wilson is going to bring the passion, until the whistle blows.
That gleam was in his eyes, as Wilson stood in the locker room last month, telling a writer from Mile High Sports Magazine and myself what it’s like to crawl from the wreckage of a football crash.
“If you are at the bottom, at least you have the ground to balance yourself and you can kind of put yourself in position where you can keep from getting hurt,” Wilson said. “If you are in the middle (of the pile), you could be in an awkward position.
“But I will admit that sometimes in the pile, you never know what’s going to happen, because you have got guys jumping on top and piling on.”
As Wilson tore across the field in crazy pursuit of a fumble contested by the Seahawks, he got plowed accidentally by teammate Gerard Warren in a pile where violence becomes a blur making friends indistinguishable from foes.
From Darryl Stingley to Mike Utley, NFL history is littered with enough tragedies of paralyzed athletes who did not get up, that every time a new one goes down and medical personnel hover, examining the neck of a hurt player, fear begins to creep in.
“You have to be scared. It’s the X factor of the unknown,” said Broncos linebacker Keith Burns, one of several teammates who rushed from his postgame shower to the Douglas County hospital where Wilson was treated.
Violence is what makes football rock in America. We try not to think of how dire the consequences can be.
Neither God nor sportswriters care who wins a football game, which might be the only time newspaper hacks will ever be confused with anything holy. But upon hearing the news the X-rays on Wilson came back clean, and he could walk into work hours after the scary hit with nothing worse than numbness in his shoulders, even an ink-stained wretch smiled.
Here is what we cheer for.
Al Wilson, getting up.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
