Alex Smith's miraculous comeback story captured the hearts of NFL fans all over the world after a horrific leg injury nearly cost him not only that leg, but his life.
Related
But he wasn't the first big-time quarterback to go through the traumatic experience of a life-endangering injury and come back. In fact, longtime Patriots QB Drew Bledsoe not only made a triumphant return — he made it to a Pro Bowl the season following his brush with death.
But what are the nitty-gritty details of that fateful day in 2001, when Bledsoe took a seemingly normal hit against the Jets and found himself in a dire situation not long after? He joined former MLB player Bret Boone on his podcast to discuss what went down.
Bledsoe recalled that the Patriots' Week 3 matchup with the Jets was up in the air leading up to the game, as the Jets had decided not to play their Week 2 game in the wake of 9/11, ultimately prompting the league to cancel the whole slate of games. Bledsoe, as a player rep for the Pats, was on calls with other reps and the commissioner figuring out the best plan of action.
"So there's all kinds of stuff going up to the game," Bledsoe recalled. "And then we get into the game, we're not doing great.
"I scrambled out to the right and it was third down, late in the game, and I'm like, well, I'm not just gonna run out of bounds, I gotta get to the first down. So I turn back in and Mo Lewis hits me in the chest, and it was a bad hit, but it didn't look super dangerous. I got up and actually went back into the game the next series, and the only reason they took me out was because I also had a pretty gnarly concussion and couldn't remember the plays."
Bledsoe was under center and, in the midst of attempting to fight his concussive symptoms and remember how to run the offense, turned around to ask fullback Marc Edwards what to call out for a play designed to the left side. Edwards then told coaches on the sideline that Bledsoe wasn't quite right, which eventually led to a young Tom Brady getting subbed in for the final drive of the game.
A side note: Bledsoe also says that a little-known fact is that the team was going back-and-forth about whether the No. 2 quarterback behind him, at the time, should have been Brady or Damon Huard. During the first game of the season, Bledsoe thinks that they actually were leaning Huard, but ultimately, it seems as though the Patriots made the right choice... but more on that later.
"After that game... [I'm] coming off and Ronnie O'Neil, our trainer, grabs me and says, 'hey bub, why don't you come with me, you don't look very good,' and I go, 'alright, I'm gonna go do a team prayer and then I'll come,' " Bledsoe said, but O'Neil wouldn't let him partake, as he was concerned. "So we went in, and by the time we got to the training room, I was hurting pretty bad. And then the big thing that set him off, that let him know that I was in some sort of trouble was that normally when you have a concussion, your heart rate slows down pretty quick, and my heart rate was escalating.
"So they threw me in the ambulance, had to get out of postgame traffic... my brother actually was at the game, jumped in the ambulance with me, and we're on our way to Mass General up in Boston. And my brother tells the story — and I don't even remember this — but I was sitting there and I couldn't take morphine because I'm allergic, and I couldn't take Advil because it's an anticoagulant and they didn't want me to have that in my body, so they couldn't give me anything for pain. So I was just moaning and groaning and hurting and we get just to the outskirts of Boston and my brother's looking at me."
That's when Bledsoe's injury took a sharp turn for the worse.
"I just went lights out. Just shut down, gone, didn't have enough blood left in my body to keep functioning," Bledsoe explained. "So they hauled ass to the hospital and when I woke up, they had a tube stuffed in my chest that was draining the blood out of my chest, cleaning it up and putting it back in me, and stayed like that for six days."
What he had officially suffered is called a hemothorax, which is when blood collects between the chest wall and the lung. Dr. Thomas Gill IV, who was a team physician back in 2001 when the injury occurred, remembered how frightening it was.
"Drew could have died," Gill told SI.com's Greg Bedard in 2016. "He ended up having about three liters of blood in his chest. He had torn one of the blood vessels behind his rib that was then pumping blood into his chest. They got a CAT scan of his belly, and you can see the bottom of the lung fields and they could see that was filled with fluid. So then they extended the study up the chest and saw what the problem was.
"They were able to drain the blood out and immediately once that happened, he started feeling better, his breathing was under control, his blood pressure stabilized. But it was really dicey. I don't even think Drew knows how serious it was. But he really could have died."
After those long days in the hospital, Bledsoe was finally restored to a level at which they could release him, and he rejoined the Patriots. But things were different.
"...All of a sudden, my job wasn't there anymore, and that sucked after eight years of being the guy there," Bledsoe said. "You know, I was happy for Tom and he's still a great friend and I couldn't be happier for the guy, couldn't be happier for our team. But for me, on a personal level, it was bloody to go through all of that and then you come back and the job you left isn't yours anymore. That was hard."
Bledsoe wasn't done making an impact for the Patriots. After Brady led the team to the playoffs, he was injured in the AFC Championship Game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Bledsoe led a gutsy performance to pull out a 24-17 win. Brady would then return for the Super Bowl, which the Patriots won, and the rest is history.
Bledsoe finished off his career in Buffalo for three years and in Dallas for two, serving as their starting quarterback until he was replaced by Tono Romo in 2006.
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy Sports
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram