Over the past several days in the Eagles locker room, we examined a rather sensitive topic in the fallout of the team’s win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in London. A pair of competing stories emerged. The narrative version is below. If you prefer to read the classic Wulf’s Den version, click or tap here.
There is no doubt that offensive linemen comprise a different species than the rest of us. On the Eagles alone, left tackle Jason Peters has started every game this season despite a torn biceps, a nagging quad injury and the painful remnants of last season’s torn ACL. Right tackle Lane Johnson is preparing to play Sunday after tearing his MCL in the Eagles’ last game. Initial reports suggested he could miss up to six weeks of action. He’s also been playing through a high ankle sprain for much of the season. And center Jason Kelce has played all but two offensive snaps while battling a mysterious knee injury he mostly refuses to acknowledge.
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It’s all but impossible for the layman to relate to such feats of superhuman willpower. What is relatable, however, is the wince-inducing reason Kelce missed the second snap of the Eagles’ win over the Jaguars two weekends ago in London.
“I got a cleat to the Crown Jewels, as I guess they would say out here,” Kelce explained after the game. “I just needed to re-adjust them a little bit, kind of shake it out.”
“That sucks,” linebacker Jordan Hicks said a week later, remembering the choppy field conditions at Wembley Stadium. “Everybody was wearing seven studs too, so that couldn’t have been a fun deal.”
‘If you play football, you’ve gotten hit in the nuts’
Those are the wise words of right guard Brandon Brooks, who estimates that he suffers some form of the momentary injury once every four or five games or so.
“I’ve got hit in the nuts enough times to tell you it’s never fun. It’s just part of the game,” he says. “Really it’s just, can the pain subside by the next play? Because that shit is no joke, man. Especially with cleats on.”
Brooks’ proclamation aside, there is some debate in the Eagles locker room about the relative ubiquity of such testy situations. LaRoy Reynolds, Avonte Maddox and Jordan Hicks say they’ve never been sacked on the field. Nigel Bradham is too “quick” to have been knackered in the middle of a play. Kamu Grugier-Hill goes so far as to accuse Brooks and the rest of the offensive line of being out of their marbles.
“I think they’re lying,” he says. “I don’t know what the hell they got going on in there.”
Mostly, though, there are stories.
“My buddy in high school during practice, we were doing a blitz drill and one of the linebackers was running up, he played center and the knee went right to the nuts,” offensive lineman Matt Pryor remembers. “I have never heard anybody shriek so loud in my life. He fell straight back.”
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“(I was playing) receiver at the time,” practice squad linebacker Asantay Brown recalls from his high school days. “I had the ball and I tried to break a tackle, do a spin, and when the dude hit me and rolled off, I spun back, like because he was on the ground. His foot came up and I went down on it and he kicked me … I sat out for a few plays. You know how it is, you get a little sensitive.”
“I would think it would happen more often, but I can’t remember the last time I got hit in my balls,” defensive end Chris Long says. “I mean you’re bound to get hit there now and again, some guys are more lucky than others. … I heard of a guy, a guy I played with in college, he was a legend in high school. He played in the state championship game with a twisted testicle and he ran for 250 yards. Then he had to go to the hospital.”
“Man, I got hit in the nuts on a walkthrough!” says guard Chance Warmack. “I think Isaac (Seumalo) did it. … They had a combo block and I was giving a look, I was in the shade, he cranked that flipper, man, and he got a little bit of my nuts. … It was a painful experience bro, I don’t wanna remember it. I wanna try to avoid it.”
A linebacker now, Nate Gerry played a different position at Nebraska and he has a story to tell about the other member of his safety tandem suffering the ill effects of a breach of safety for his tandem.
“I think it was a collision or something, a knee bounce or something. (It was against) USC, we were playing (Nelson Agholor),” Gerry says. “I just remember looking over in the end zone, he was back there (puking sound). Hut, zoom, touchdown. … They’re down there on the whatever, 4-yard-line, (we’re getting) set up and then they score a touchdown as he’s throwing up.”
And then there’s the memory of a haunting Monday night in November 2011, when Eagles cornerback Asante Samuel suffered what was officially deemed a “groin laceration.” After the game, he called it the most painful moment of his career.
‘I thought he was gonna die’
To briefly depart from sensitive parts, there are other locker room stories of memorable moments of panic.
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“I got, like, stabbed in the leg with a knee brace,” says quarterback Nate Sudfeld. “Sophomore year at Michigan State. It was a pile. I got the ball off on a screen, then I got up and was like, ‘Man, my leg doesn’t feel right.’ Huge piece of flesh gouged out, it was gushing blood. It was 3rd and 6, and I was like, ‘Oh, gosh.’ It was a huge gouge-out. So that was painful.”
He then hikes up his shorts to show the scar on his thigh.
“It was crazy. Like, it literally looked like somebody had a knife and gouged it out. The skin, like, flapped out … I came to the sideline after the drive and taped it up. Taped it over and played decent the rest of the game.”
Gerry has another Nebraska story, this one devoid of vomit.
“We had a Hail Mary when I was at Nebraska and the kid caught it, so we won the game and we stormed the field or whatever and I’m in the middle of (the pile) towards the bottom,” he says. “I swear to God, there was probably a 20-second span where I thought I was gonna die. I was scared for my life. A bunch of us were. I’m never gonna do that again, I promise you.”
Long snapper Rick Lovato, meanwhile, once feared he had flung a fatal blow.
“I hit one my older coaches in the head while snapping, and this was during the game,” he says. “At Old Dominion, on the sidelines, I hit him in the head and he fell over like a bag of bricks. I thought he was gonna die. Because he was older, he was 60-something years old. I thought he was gonna have a heart attack or something like that. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ And he was on the ground for a good 20 minutes and I had to go over to him and sincerely apologize. … That was a scary sight, trying to focus on the game but I just hit a coach in the head.”
Thankfully, the offensive line coach lived to yell another day.
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‘It was always the smallest guy doing it’
There are not many workplaces in which wayward shots to the groin are considered an occupational hazard. Yet, the Eagles employ someone who has dealt with just such peril at his previous job.
“They grab your nuts,” says Australian offensive lineman Jordan Mailata, remembering his rugby days. “When you’re getting tackled. It’s not (accidental), they grab your nuts when you’re getting tackled. If there’s more than three people, they’ll do it. Happened to me.
“It was always the smallest guy doing it too. Because he was so small. There was three guys on me, he’d be in there like this (twisting motion). I’m serious! I wish I was lying. That stuff happens.”
There is, of course, the question of injury prevention. If such a debilitating turn of events is so often possible, why not wear protection?
“I don’t think anybody in the NFL wears a cup,” Kelce says.
“It’s restrictive,” Brown says. “I think part of it is because like, the side of the cup, they dig into the crotch area and it hurts.”
In the age of sports science, the topic then turns to innovation. Why have there been no advances in athletic cup technology?
“It’s like spoons,” says Long. “It’s never changed. Maybe it should.”
For now, the Eagles will have to settle for simply rolling the dice and commiserating with their fallen comrades.
“I’ve never been hit in the nuts,” Fletcher Cox says when informed of Kelce’s trauma. “That shit hurt, though. I know how he felt, getting kicked in the nads.”
(Top photo: John Jones / Icon SportsWire via Getty Images)
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