TEDDY BAWLGAME
New Jets QB recounts tearful return to field after gruesome 2016 injury
THEY were crying and praying for Teddy Bridgewater on that fateful day when they feared not merely for the loss of an NFL career, but for his leg. They called 9-1-1, the ambulance came for Bridgewater, and Vikings coach Mike Zimmer canceled practice because the afternoon had turned to mourning.
It is 22 months later and Teddy Bridgewater is a Jet, still chasing a dream that appeared shattered as he lay screaming on a Winter Park practice field days before the 2016 opener, his left knee so gruesomely dislocated and torn his teammates could not even look at it, and some who did started vomiting.
Bridgewater cried the November day last season when he got to put on the uniform again and run through the tunnel again and hear the cheers again and stand on the sideline with his Vikings teammates again. Everyone who has gotten to know him as a sweet, caring Mama’s boy will be rooting for him to author one of the great inspirational comeback stories any sport can muster.
What happened to Bridgewater is simply beyond the pale of comprehension or fairness. Because he crumpled in a heap during a non-contact 11-on-11 drill. And just like that, a rising star had fallen.
On this first day of Jets minicamp, I asked why his eyes flooded with tears on the day he had made it back. He smiled. Which he does a lot.
“This game means a lot to me,” Bridgewater said. “I’ve been playing football since I was 5 years old, and … it brought tears to my eyes because it showed me that you’re never out of it. You’re never out of the fight.
“There were days throughout my rehab process, so when you’re rehabbing, the light seems so far at the end of the tunnel. But to be able to see that light, and make it to the light — which is being active and standing on that sideline with my gear on — it kind of hit me a little.
“I joked around with my agent, my adviser, told ’em, ‘Man, I’m a tough guy. I won’t cry.’ But reality set in, it was truly a blessing to be back out there and continue to live your dream.
“I mentioned something last year. I said, ‘Usually when you have a dream, and you wake up and you go back to sleep, you don’t pick up that same dream.’ And for me, I was fortunate enough to go to sleep, wake up and go back to sleep and pick up my dream right where it left off. “Those tears were tears of joy.” It was a dream sometimes threatened by the bullets flying through the mean streets in and around the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami. It was a dream nurtured by a loving single mother of four named Rose Murphy — who saw the possibilities for her baby boy, and who eventually fought off breast cancer.
“She was a fighter, so I witnessed her fight with her battle with breast cancer,” Bridgewater said. “Whenever she was down — well, she was never really down, because she would always say, ‘There’s someone out there whose situation is way worse than mine, so I can’t be down, so I have to be positive.’
“Watching her continue to smile and stay upbeat throughout her toughest times in life had a huge impact on me.”
He was forced to summon every ounce of that resolve when the football gods unmercifully sacked him on that fateful day.
“I think about the reaction of my teammates,” Bridgewater said, “and as gruesome as it may have seemed, I feel like I did a great job of remaining poised. There were guys throwing helmets, guys on knees, and I didn’t cry, I didn’t (chuckle) worry, I just knew that it was in God’s hands. I think I was impressed with the way I kept my faith. But I just got to see how much I meant to the guys — not only as a football player, but as a person, because it could have went totally south.” Bridgewater was asked how scary it was . “It was scary, but at the end of the day, I was still breathing. … I needed the faith of a mustard seed, and we’ll be all right,” he said with a chuckle.
If there is any justice, he will be the face of a franchise again. The Jets drafted Sam Darnold to be their face. So maybe this is just a $500,000 stepping stone to another franchise for Bridgewater.
Or maybe, just maybe, it will prove to be more.
Because Teddy Bridgewater, only 26 in November, is looking like Teddy Bridgewater again, accurate and mobile and smart. The test for his knee will come in training camp.
“I’m locked in and worried about what I can do right now,” Bridgewater said. “That time will come.”
And he might have been the only one who believed it would.