In Terrell Owens, meet Jack Youngblood, the legendary Rams linebacker comments on Terrell’s injury:
“To be honest,” Youngblood said, “it’s hard to compare my injury to [Owens']. He’s been out of the game for what, five weeks? He’s been convalescing. After four weeks, an amputation should be healed. Shouldn’t it?”
In case you don’t remember Youngblood, here’s why he can talk that way:
“It was the first game of the 1979 playoffs. We had barely made it to the playoffs after having one of the dominant teams in the league for a few years and never getting over the hump. Really, it was a little bit of a surprise we made it. So we’re playing the Cowboys in Dallas in the divisional playoffs. Late in the second quarter, the guard bumps me over, foot gets caught in the turf, and it gets pinned up against a body and I feel it snap maybe an inch or two above the ankle. I rolled around like a turtle in pain. They take me directly to the locker room. Clarence Shields, one of our doctors, takes an X-ray, and I’m just dying, from pain and anger that I’m out of the game.“I start yelling, ‘Somebody come in here and tape this damn thing up and bring me some aspirin!’ Clarence comes in and says, ‘I can’t do that! You’re fibula’s snapped like a pencil.’
“I said I didn’t care, and he sticks the X-ray in that light board they had and says, ‘Look! You got a broken bone!’
“I told the trainers, ‘Tape me up!’ And so they came in, strapped my leg as tight as they could. The pain was excruciating. I can’t even describe it. But they couldn’t shoot the bone with a painkiller; that stuff doesn’t work on bones. And I got up. It was near the end of halftime now, and I moved cautiously, just putting a little weight on it at first. The coaches were standing around, looking at me, and wondering, ‘What is this madman going to do?’ But I was playing. I told [coach] Ray Malavasi I wouldn’t play if it hurt the team, but I knew I could do it. But my leg was … again, just really bad. It took me all of halftime and then a couple of minutes into the third quarter to know I could go back out there and play.”