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The Pivot Point

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

-Jeremiah 29:11

Let me tell you about the most extraordinary football season of my ??life, a time where I felt that God was smiling on me and the sky was the limit in my career. It's strange thinking about that time now because what I didn't know then was that it would all be over in an instant.

First of all, I love professional football. I love everything about it. I love the competitiveness (I'm the most competitive person I know!), the camaraderie, the teamwork, the discipline, the preparation, the intensity, and the physicality of it. For me, it was part of the American dream, to pursue something and be passionate about it, to be successful at something, and go try to be the very best you can be. Along with that, it was just so much fun and brought so much abundance to my family and me. To play football as a profession has been one of the biggest blessings of my life.

In 2009, I was a first-round draft pick by the Buffalo Bills. I played my entire nine-year career with the Bills, and they offered me an extended contract twice before my ninth season in the NFL. In my final year on my second deal with the Bills, I contemplated what I wanted to do next. Should I stick around, or should I maybe hit free agency? The Bills had been really good to me, and I loved all those guys. They were some of the best of the best. Yet there was always the temptation to try something new, to challenge myself differently.

What made the decision easy for me was that the Bills just hired Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane, and I truly trusted their vision for the organization. I also couldn't imagine the Bills breaking the longest playoff drought in the NFL and me not be a part of it. I had put so much blood, sweat, and tears into playing for the Bills, and I needed to be there for when the tide turned and the Bills would be successful again. With my faith in the Bills secure, I signed a contract extension before my ninth season-the very special 2017 season.

You see, the Buffalo Bills hadn't made it to the playoffs for 17 years. And we were going to be the winning team configuration to break that drought. That didn't seem like the way it would be at first. We traded away our most recent top picks that the previous regime had drafted, and many outsiders thought we were tanking. Tanking is when a team will intentionally have a bad season in order to get better draft picks and try to set the organization up for long-term success.

Tanking is a nightmare for veterans on a team. Would I even be around by the time this team would be good enough to make the playoffs? Would I be cut or traded to ensure a losing season? Did I really want to take on the physicality of an NFL season when we have no shot at making the playoffs?

Our leadership council met with Sean McDermott, and he was explaining that we were, in fact, not tanking. We were simply trying to build a team of players that had a certain type of DNA that would set the culture for long-term success, and Sean felt that this could also lead to success in the short term as well. Although it didn't make full sense to all of us in that meeting, we put our trust in the Bills' front office that we were going to go out and be in a "win-now" mode.

It turned out to be the perfect strategy, along with the exact right combination of players and leadership. After we had won our final game of the season against the Dolphins, we watched from the locker room as the Bengals beat the Ravens to send us to the playoffs. Professionally, that was one of the most joyful moments of my life. (If you're curious, you can go on YouTube and watch our celebration.)

Life was good. I already had my contract in place. My beautiful wife, Leslie, was in the late stages of pregnancy, about ready to pop with our second child. I figured that she, the kids, and I would be in Buffalo through year 11 at that point. We had a house up there, and we lived back and forth between Buffalo, New York, and Louisville, Kentucky. I felt unbelievably lucky to have so many blessings and positive things in my life all at once.

Because my second child was so close to being born, I had an unusual attitude heading into the Jacksonville game. We were either going to beat Jacksonville and move on into the second round of the playoffs, or we would lose the game, and I would get to witness the birth of my son. It was a win-win situation for me, something I wasn't used to feeling about possibly losing a big game. As I said, I'm very competitive.

Our game was scheduled for a Sunday, and Leslie was being induced on Wednesday. We ended up losing in Jacksonville, 10-3. All players must get an exit physical the day after the last game of the season. So we lost on Sunday, and the team doctor wanted me to do an exit physical on Monday morning.

So the season ends. I'm the only player on the team that played 100% of the snaps that year-which is pretty rare in the NFL because you could either be beating a team really badly, and they pull the starters, or you could be losing by a ton, and they could pull the starters (both had happened to me in previous years of my career). Also, injuries pop up all of the time when you would have to miss snaps, or your shoe could even come untied to cause you to miss a play. I was an alternate for the Pro Bowl, and there were two centers in the playoffs. So the chances of me going to the Pro Bowl were pretty good.

I was in a hurry to get out of Buffalo to go catch the birth of my son, but the doctor insisted I get an MRI before I leave town.

And I said, "Look, I'm good. I'm the only player who played all the snaps. Please send me home. I'm going to get out of here because I'm going to go catch the birth of my son."

"Well, you had these stingers this year," he said. "Just go out and get an MRI on your neck."

I didn't want to hear it. If you're unfamiliar with "stingers," they're a common ailment suffered by football players in particular. It's a tingling feeling in the hand or arm resulting from a nerve injury in the neck or shoulder. If you've ever played high school football, chances are you or someone on your team had a stinger at least once. And that's precisely what I told the doctor! "My buddies in high school had stingers! Why do I need to get an MRI for a stinger?" The whole situation seemed ridiculous.

But he said, "You know, it's kind of alarming that you never suffered a stinger until this season." So I gave in and got an MRI, hopped into my car, and drove back to Louisville as fast as I could to be with my wife for the birth of our son. I wouldn't get the MRI results right away, but I wasn't anxious about it.

Honestly, that MRI was the furthest thing from my mind on that Wednesday. There I was, in the hospital waiting room, about 50 minutes from my son being born, and I get the call.

It was the call that ended my career.

The MRI revealed that in my cervical column, at points C2 and C3, I had disc and bone penetrating into my spinal cord. The doctors were not sure why or how I wasn't lying motionless on a football field, but that's what the MRI indicated should have happened to cause this. They told me this injury meant I could no longer play football. I thought, How could this be?

At first, I was in complete denial. I brought up that Peyton Manning had a neck fusion; why couldn't I? I found myself thinking there must be some way out, like, is there any way we can make this surgery work?

I found out later that Manning's neck fusion was lower in his spine. Everything is less stable toward the top, and when you hurt your spinal cord, it affects everything below it. C2 and C3 are too high on the spinal column to do the same kind of fusion procedure.

The doctors told me I was lucky I wasn't more affected by the injury than I was with only the stingers. They told me I was fortunate just to have walked away from the field. They also said that even though there was a chance at a successful surgery, I would never pass a football physical again.

So this situation was serious. The doctors stressed that if I got hit the wrong way with this kind of injury, I could be a paraplegic and lose my ability to breathe on my own without machines. And that hit me close to home.

You see, my little brother, Evan, was born with severe cerebral palsy. He never walked, talked, or breathed on his own. I saw firsthand what that looked like. He fought and lived for 11 years-and it was hard to watch him struggle. I was 14 when he passed. And so to get that news and be able to picture myself in my brother and what could have happened-well, that was a little intense for me.

I was at the crossroads of "grateful it's not worse" but also devastated that I had to face this. I got the news that my career was over, and it just shocked me. I know that it happens to a lot of guys, but, honestly, at that moment, I just felt cheated because I felt like I had put in so much work to that point.

I mean, I had so much joy on a day-to-day basis in that facility. I was a captain for three years, and it should have been five. Rex Ryan, the head coach of the Buffalo Bills, doesn't do captains. He does game...