Paralysis scare like Aaron Williams experienced shakes up family, others

ByJOHNETTE HOWARD
September 25, 2015, 11:23 AM

— -- The thought that immediately struck people close to Buffalo Bills safety Aaron Williams was the play he had just been involved in didn't look like the kind of NFL collision where something might go terribly, perhaps even irreversibly, wrong.

New England Patriots wideout Julian Edelman had caught a pass in the third quarter Sunday at Buffalo, raced toward the goal line and launched himself airborne toward the pylon. Williams dived with him and wrapped his arms around Edelman's waist, trying in vain to prevent a touchdown. The players briefly soared horizontal to the ground together before hitting the turf.

It didn't appear to be the kind of play that would result in a frightening injury -- not until the 25-year-old Williams didn't get up. The sight of him being strapped to a board and loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher sent shock waves through Williams' parents and three siblings (all of whom were in the stadium), as well as his teammates, TV viewers and people around the league.

Players on the field fell to a knee to pray. Comments started flying out on Twitter. The football network shows gave updates on Williams' condition into the evening.

Anthony Williams -- a football player himself once and a man who still works around the game as a scout and consultant -- says what happened to his son is part of the constantly renewing bargain that football players make with the game.

"You know what you're getting into when you sign up," the elder Williams said in a phone interview this week from the Austin, Texas, area where the family lives.

Which is true enough.

But that doesn't mean in those moments Williams lay on the field being tended to, the people involved didn't re-visit and perhaps question all that comes with playing top-flight, high-stakes football. The risk and the rewards. The sobering medical studies and post-career stories that keep raining down like bricks. The roiling thoughts players, their families and their friends routinely tamp down or shove out of mind when players go off to play.

Everyone gets hurt sooner or later. The question is, how badly?

"And when it's your son playing, it's just a different kind of 'watching' a game," Aaron's mom, Val, said. "I never tell him I'm concerned. But sure I am."

Players are carted off. The games go on. It feels so routine. But we don't get to see what goes on behind the scenes when something such as the paralysis scare Williams endured happens. But the aftershocks ripple out in ever-expanding circles, even after a player is able to walk away.

The parents

Williams' parents and his younger siblings, Joshua, Daniel and Ayanna, happened to be seated near the end zone where he was hurt Sunday because the fifth-year pro had flown his family to Buffalo for the Bills' first showdown against the Patriots of the Rex Ryan era.

Val, a middle school teacher in Austin, says she was just about to go to the concession stand when the third-quarter play involving Aaron and Edelman happened.

"On any play," she said, "whatever Aaron does, I always say to myself, 'Get up. Get up. Get up.' ... He could be making just a regular tackle. I always think, 'Just get up.' We have a family rule: Show everyone you're OK."

But when Aaron didn't get up, Val felt even more alarmed. Then a member of the Bills' medical staff motioned for help. Anthony immediately took off for the Bills' locker room, and the rest of the family hurried down to the railing near where Aaron lay unnervingly still.

"I'm sure whatever the record is for a mom, I broke it getting down there," Val, a former sprinter at San Jose State, said with a laugh. Then, growing serious, she added, "I just kept thinking, 'This is not good.' Then, 'Please let him be OK. Please let him be OK.' From there it was straight into praying: 'Lord, please watch over my children.'

"My other sons were urging me, 'Mom! Go on the field!' But I thought, 'This isn't high school football anymore. I can't just run out there because I'm his mom.' And I guess it's just so ingrained in me, 'This is his job -- his profession.' I didn't do it. I wanted them to help him rather than worry about dealing with me."

Anthony was already waiting near the Bills' locker room when the ambulance brought his son off the field. By then, his wife and other children had been hurried onto the field and through the tunnel, too. But none of them got to speak to Aaron before he was rushed away to the hospital.

Within 10-15 minutes, the Williams family was told Aaron had regained movement in his extremities. That was a big relief to Anthony. But Val didn't feel as comforted by the preliminary news as her husband did.

"No. No. No," Val said. "Not until I saw him and not until a doctor told me there's nothing to worry about. Until then, it's all speculation."

The Bills offered the Williams family a police escort for the 15-minute drive to the trauma center where Aaron was taken. The family was touched by that. Aaron was cleared to go home that night after a series of tests. He even walked out of the hospital on his own.

"I'm not obviously able to disclose specific injury information," his dad said. "But just say he had a very severe stinger. He said his left arm was numb and very tingly, almost like he slept on it wrong. He said to me, 'It was more like, literally, my arm fell asleep. I wasn't feeling anything when they were checking my shoulder and neck. But my other three extremities were fine.'"

Val says the first thing Aaron said when he saw her and she kissed him on the cheek was, "Mom, I'm all right. I'm cool." Then this: "Mama, can you believe the Patriots scored 40 points on us?"

"He wasn't happy at all about that," Val said, laughing.

Anthony said medical tests didn't reveal any physical defect that might prevent his son from continuing to play. But the close call did take him back to a scare he had during his playing days at San Francisco State.

"I was playing outside linebacker, rushing the quarterback, and a running back tried to block me and clipped my feet," Anthony recalled. "I took a mid-air dive just like I was going into a swimming pool. I landed right on the top of my head, and as I was laying on the field, numb, I thought, 'Oh no. That's it. I'm going to be paralyzed.' Then I thought: 'What can I do? How is my family going to take care of me?'"

Anthony said he was OK by the time he got to the locker room, "But it's nothing I want Aaron or any of my children to ever go through, because I felt that scary few seconds, that fear: 'Can I move anything?' Then: 'Am I going to be all right?'"

The teammates

Many Bills say Aaron Williams is a popular, vocal player among his peers. "He gives us a presence we all want," said fellow safety Duke Williams (no relation to Aaron). Like Bills cornerback Ron Brooks, Duke Williams was initially confused when Aaron stayed down after the collision with Edelman. Then dread set in. "He just wasn't moving, even when he was in the ambulance," Brooks recalled after a Bills practice this week.

Brooks said the scene took him back to a similar scare he went through last season. He was carted off the field on a stretcher with his neck immobilized and taken to the hospital; Brooks landed on his head after being upended while covering a punt return against Detroit.

"Any time you get hurt and they got to bring an ambulance out it's scary for everybody -- especially the person that the ambulance has been called for," Brooks said. "It's a scary feeling, not knowing what exactly is going on."

"Guys go down all the time," Duke Williams said, "but when you see guys not moving, that's a concern. ... Now it's not about football anymore. It's about that person's health, and I'm just praying for him and his family, hoping they're all right."

Said Brooks: "At that point, all you can do is -- for me -- say a prayer."

The medical staff and coaches

Bills longtime trainer Bud Carpenter and team doctor Andrew Cappuccino had been through this sort of scare before -- most notably when Cappuccino's quick work to lower Bills tight end Kevin Everett's body temperature is believed to have helped prevent Everett from being permanently paralyzed from a spinal cord injury in a 2007 game.

Both Carpenter and Cappuccino said this week, through a Bills spokesperson, they didn't want to talk about Williams' case even though days had passed since it happened.

Bills team chaplain James Trapp, who led a prayer circle on the field while Williams was being tended to, didn't want to be interviewed either.

Nor has Williams himself spoken yet to the press.

Perhaps the close calls have added up?

Even the Bills' Ryan, usually one of the league's glibbest coaches, has been spare in his remarks since Williams suffered his neck injury. The left-unsaid feeling seems to be "another bullet was dodged."

"He was cleared from the hospital and things, so that was real encouraging," Ryan said of Williams while ruling him out for this Sunday's game. "He's just stiff and sore right now. He's kind of got a thing on his neck and stuff. So we'll see how it progresses. But thank goodness [he] was cleared."

The best friend

While many Bills players swung by Williams' house starting Sunday night to check on him, drop off food and offer whatever help he needed, such as giving him a ride to work, Seattle running back Fred Jackson was locked in a different emotional place.

Jackson, still a revered figure in Buffalo, was Williams' closest friend on the Bills' squad before being cut in August. He was watching the Bills-Pats game on TV as the Seahawks waited to play the Packers in Green Bay later that night.

Williams, who is seven years younger than Jackson, wore Jackson's jersey at a Bills practice the day after Jackson was released as homage to him for being his NFL mentor. Jackson says he considers Williams "like a little brother to me. My son looks at him like an uncle." So it was disturbing for Jackson to see Williams loaded onto a stretcher. He texted his wife right away, and she texted some friends in Buffalo, asking them to relay whatever they heard as soon as possible.

"Initially it wasn't much news," Jackson recalled after a Seattle practice this week. "I tried to reach out to his family and find out as much as I could. ... Any time they bring the ambulance out there, your heart sinks and you're nervous for him and what he's going through in that moment.

"They just said he was going to the hospital. Then I was able to hear from him directly. Any time you're able to hear from the person directly, it eases a lot of that pain or emotion that you're feeling."

Much like Williams' teammates, who said it was no coincidence they surged for 19 fourth-quarter points after Williams was hurt in the 40-32 loss, Jackson couldn't help but take his emotion onto the field.

Jackson held up a "2-3" sign with his fingers for Williams' No. 23 during the Seahawks' game that night.

"It was something that I obviously didn't want to let affect me, but when somebody you feel is like family, you're obviously going to think about them and feel a little bit," Jackson said.

Jackson also sent out a tweet to Williams.

And a fan of both players tweeted back:

Football players break and bleed and get carted off and come back. The names change. The games go on. But nobody is kidding themselves

Val and Anthony Williams say one of the many things their son's injury underscored for them is once you're a part of the NFL, those inside the league try to take care of their own. And only they know what that uneasy Faustian bargain they all make with the game is like.

"I can't tell you how humbling and amazing it was, the way that so many people reached out to us because they cared about our son," Anthony said. "God is good."

"If Aaron wants to continue to play, I'm fine," Val said. "And if he were to call me today and say he didn't want to continue to play, I'd say, 'OK. What's next?' But until then, I just keep the same processes in place: Pray before the game. Pray during the game. Pray after the game. These men are faster. Stronger. More skilled than ever, you know?"

She sighs.

"It can be a scary game sometimes. It really is."