Is Ryan Shazier Ever Playing Football Again

The pastor takes a phone phone call on his porch, where he is reading well-nigh the life of Moses, the Biblical character who endured the Ten Plagues, led the Exodus of the Israelites, received the Ten Commandments and wandered the desert for 40 years. Kind of seems applicative to 2020, the pastor says with a laugh.

This is Vernon Shazier, head of River of Life Fellowship in South Florida, a man who spent all bound and summer counseling parishioners, friends, relatives, even NFL players from his long-ago days every bit the Dolphins squad chaplain. He advised so many, for then long, their issues so vexing and deep, that he took September off. Had to. "I needed a break from solving problems," he says, knowing that he yet spent two full weeks in the month abroad dealing with his own.

I first met Vernon last autumn, on that very porch. I came to ask him nearly his son, Ryan, a Pro Basin linebacker for the Steelers who, in Dec. 2017, suffered a spinal cord injury on a football field in Cincinnati. I asked Vernon well-nigh his faith, about the months that Ryan had been paralyzed, most his miraculous recovery and how the pastor reconciled the worst solar day of his life with what he described as his life's calling.

Vernon Shazier

Jeffery A. Salter /Sports Illustrated

One affair Vernon said from the evening resonated with me ever since. He couldn't bring himself to scout football, or even sports. But he wanted, more than anything, for Ryan to play again. He knew the odds, and how he sounded, and how many would think him delusional at best. But he believed, all the way until this September, when Ryan planned a visit home to tell the rest of the world what Vernon already knew.

Vernon picked upwardly Ryan, daughter-in-law Michelle and their immature son, Lyon, at the airdrome on Sun, Sept. vi. Not even three years removed from ane of the scariest injuries ever suffered in a pro football, Ryan could now walk with only a minor limp. He didn't need help. He could alive a "normal" life. Ryan had left Pittsburgh, Vernon says, because he didn't want to be a distraction to his former teammates and he wanted to be abode, with his family, for unconditional support. "I worked my butt off," he told Vernon. "Only I have not been able to go back to 100 percent."

For Vernon, the unplugging had already started. No email. No phone calls. He'd read books, smoke cigars, sit out on the porch and contemplate his son's futurity. Commonly when Ryan visited, old friends stopped past constantly. Only not now, during the global pandemic. Ryan's grandparents marked the only guests. "It was similar nosotros were in a cave, man," Vernon says.

They needed the isolation, because they knew how difficult the declaration would exist to brand. Ryan wasn't the but family unit member who had struggled with depression; they all had. Ryan wasn't the only family member who wanted him to repossess his starting spot in the Steelers starting lineup; they all wanted him to.

For months, as Ryan lay in a hospital bed, wondering if he'd always walk once again, Vernon prayed. First, he prayed for his son to walk. Eventually, he believes that prayer was answered. So, "I prayed so many times and asked God to permit [him] play football again," the pastor says. "I rehearsed it. I visualized it in my heed, [him] running back on that field." That prayer would not be answered.

On Ryan'due south showtime day home, a Monday, Labor Day, Vernon held his emotions together. On Tuesday, he lost control. He estimates he cried between 20 and 25 times, taking drives through his neighborhood, or heading out dorsum to the porch, trying to avoid Ryan seeing him break down.

Vernon wasn't pitiful nearly the football career ending, though. He was concerned about Ryan, nonetheless only 28. "Was he good for you?" Vernon asks. "Psychologically? Emotionally? Would he be stuck in nostalgia thinking his best years were already behind him?"

He can't share too much, Vernon says, wanting Ryan to tell his own story, in his own time, same as always. But he does allude to "some thoughts" existence "also crazy" and says, "low can take your mind to some deep, dark places."

The pastor has always done his best thinking on that porch, the exact kind of disquisitional analysis he needed then, and he kept going back exterior that Tuesday. Finally, he decided he should hear from the source. Just after Tuesday turned into Wednesday, effectually i:thirty a.m., he tapped on the sliding glass window from outside, summoning Ryan to his home office, the one sitting on that manmade lake in Coral Springs. He was crying once again. They both sat downwards.

"I demand to know where yous are with your decision," Vernon said. "And your life."

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Ryan stared back, and in that moment, he looked to the pastor like his son, not the football game role player who had conquered the NFL and rehabilitation from spinal surgery.

"Information technology'southward painful," Ryan said. "But I'chiliad all correct, dad. I'm all correct."

"When he said that," Vernon says now, "I was good."

On Wed, the pastor felt better. He still worried most his son, he explains, delving deeper into what he had alluded to earlier. Either Vernon or his wife, Shawn, had spent every nighttime with Ryan in the hospital for half dozen months subsequently the injury. They had seen the visits, the tears, the fear that he might not walk once again. I dark, Vernon had an out-of-body experience, and he swears he could run into himself, as if floating above, looking down at Ryan and trying to switch bodies with him. "I've talked to him when he didn't want to live," Vernon says. This was different, Ryan reassured him.

"I'm good," he said again.

A film crew arrived in the morning and gear up upwards outside, in the only place that fit the news that would be delivered that afternoon. Ryan sabbatum on the porch, the lake glimmering behind him, and recorded the announcement he hoped he wouldn't have to make until years after, after a comeback: His playing career had officially ended. He had known that, on some level, ever since the injury. But that didn't ease the pain of sending the bulletin out into the world.

Ryan, on the Steelers' sideline during a game last season.

Jake Roth/USA Today Photo

From a first-round pick in 2014 to a cornerstone of some other fierce Steelers defense to the Pro Bowl to the finish—the football game part, anyway. Shazier played four seasons. Made 299 tackles. In his bulletin, he said he loved everything almost football.

On Wednesday evening, the Shaziers began to relax. Ryan stayed with his family unit for 2 weeks. They locked themselves inside and laughed and cried and reminisced. They played games like Jenga and Heads Upwards. They rented a gunkhole and went for a cruise. Most nights bled into mornings, with Vernon and his boys, Ryan and other son Vernon, staying up; sometimes, they watched the dominicus rise together before heading off to bed. "Honestly," Vernon says, "those were two of the best weeks of my life."

The following Monday, Vernon however did not sentry the Steelers open their season, against the Giants, on the same Mon Night Football stage where Ryan's career ended. Vernon hasn't watched football since the injury; why, he'southward not exactly certain. Ryan does watch, preparing for his podcast. Just his father stopped tuning in to sports almost entirely dorsum in '17, to the point where he says he only plant out the Miami Rut, who play just down the road, were good when a relative mentioned their NBA Finals run. "Look, it'southward non as important to me every bit it once was," the pastor says. "I don't know if I avoid it to go on from allowing it to trigger. That could be function of it, so that information technology doesn't trigger whatever negative feelings or emotional thoughts."

Instead, Vernon prefers to focus on the future, on the congregation he must guide and the foundation that his son wants to build into a philanthropic strength. As Ryan went through his own recovery, he reached so many milestones, from the feeling in his legs returning to walking to getting dorsum in the gym. He got married, to Michelle Rodriguez, at a wedding his father officiated. He had another son, Lyon Carter. (His first, R.J., is from a previous relationship.) The same doctors who said he would never walk again now described Ryan every bit a miracle—truly, his progress extended beyond any reasonable expectation.

He enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to finish off the psychology caste he had started at Ohio State. With one more class, he volition complete that part of his pedagogy. But as Vernon watched Ryan put distance and perspective betwixt himself and his football career, he believes that Ryan besides found a college purpose.

It started during the worst months, in the hospital. In that location was Steelers GM Kevin Colbert, beside Ryan as he rehabbed, imploring him to scratch out another rep or 5. In that location were his swain linebackers, moving their position meetings to the hospital, lingering later to deepen their connectedness. There was Coach Mike Tomlin, nonetheless coaching, a master motivator who never needed to exist on a football field to reach a role player. And withal, in the very same infirmary where Ryan reclaimed the life he had lost, he saw other patients with no team, no family, no pastor male parent or famous friends.

"The support was overwhelming, yet at the aforementioned time, it was like, y'all're sitting at the table, and you have ham, you've got turkey, you've got all of your favorite dishes, you have all the desserts you want, you have more than enough," Vernon says. "And you look across the room and somebody is sitting there with an empty plate, and they have crumbs on it."

Somewhen, Ryan decided he wanted to non only grow his foundation just grow it so large that he could help exactly those kinds of people. The ones who needed him. Who needed counseling and bills paid and expensive therapy that most cannot afford and insurance often won't comprehend in full. "We want to go in their fight," Vernon says, "considering so many got in ours."

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Source: https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/10/29/ryan-shazier-retirement-through-eyes-of-his-father

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