by Tim Tebow
That run would have put the game away, but instead, they drove down and scored, making it 23–13. Later, when they got the ball back, something curious happened. Down by ten in the fourth quarter in a conference game against a bitter rival, Tennessee kept giving the ball to Montario Hardesty, their running back, who was having a big day. There was no sense of urgency, however. They were huddling up and taking their time. I appreciate that our defense intercepted their quarterback, Jonathan Crompton, three times on the day, but it still was curious that they weren’t trying to win the game; rather, it appeared that they merely wanted to keep it close.
Whether it was that lack of urgency or our stellar defense, we ended up winning, 23–13. I think they were happier with the score than we were—Coach Meyer even had to try and encourage us in the locker room after the game.
It was turning into a strange season, with the pressure to achieve something special and the expectations we had placed upon ourselves. At this point in 2009, we were 3–0 and had won thirteen straight games over the course of the last two seasons, the longest streak in the country . . . but we were miserable. Simply winning didn’t seem to be enough to satisfy us.
I didn’t see it at the time, but looking back, I think we maybe should have embraced the 2008 National Championship longer than we did. We immediately applied pressure to ourselves in the off-season, which some guys didn’t respond well to. Even those who did find themselves burned out and stressed out early in the season. Certainly we should have worked hard and diligently, but I think we may have overdone it. Despite wins, it simply wasn’t a very good situation.
With Kentucky up next, we tried to get past our issues and return to the drive that had fueled us for all of the previous year. Unfortunately, my health turned out to be the story of the next week. Actually make that the next three weeks.
It started on Thursday when I came down with the H1N1 virus, which at the time everyone was calling “swine flu.” It came on fast and was awful. I threw up all night and got IVs all day Friday along with several others on our team who’d also gotten it. The doctors kept us away from the rest of the team because the virus was so contagious. That fall, a couple of college and pro teams had it sweep through their entire roster in days. Because we still had symptoms on Friday, the doctors had those of us who had been sick fly separately on Saturday to join the team before the game.
By game time I felt much better, and the game itself started off well enough. As in most of our games against Kentucky over that last two decades, we dominated them. I was having a big day running, even though I had to have fluids administered intravenously throughout the game because of the flu. They used a big—huge really—diameter needle and squeezed the IV bags to force the fluids into our veins that much quicker, so we were able to get back on the field quickly.
I had rushed sixteen times for 123 yards into the third quarter, and we were driving again. We called Trick Left 351 P-Stick Lion, and as we were breaking from the huddle, I remember thinking that we actually should have scored on the play before. I went into my count and caught the snap. I looked for my receiver who was on a slant across the middle. This play would be a touchdown.
Darkness.
My parents looked serious, with a low metal ceiling above them.
Darkness.
“It’s okay, Timmy,” Kyle, our assistant trainer, said. “Just roll over.” I couldn’t figure out why I was rolling over or what the white metal was around me.
“They’re just gonna slide you in there for a CAT scan.” I rolled, stayed quiet, and waited for an explanation of why I was there.
As I was waiting for the slant to come open, a Kentucky defender had flown into me, hitting me below the chin. They told me much later that the blow to the chin wasn’t what caused my concussion, but rather the back of my head hitting my offensive lineman, Marcus Gilbert, in the knee as I fell backward from the hit. Rather than being apologetic, Marcus pointed out that he was the one who should be hurt and that no one was asking if I’d damaged his knee with my head. (I hadn’t.)
My family, sitting and watching this all unfold before them in the stands, were horrified, and as they always do in times good and bad, they started to pray. It was an awful-looking hit, and the chief of neurosurgery at Kentucky later told my dad that he was sure my spinal cord had been damaged.
AP and our training staff, as well as Kentucky’s staff, all immediately flew into action, as trainers always do when someone gets badly hurt. And the ones we have, along with Doctor Pete (Indelicato), at the University of Florida are exceptional. I’ve always appreciated that about sports-medicine professionals—they are a part of the team, but when someone goes down, the team allegiances fall away as they scramble to attend to the player. Any player.
I threw up as I was taken off in a cart—they were good enough to have draped me with a towel so I could at least have a moment of privacy. My parents rode in the back of the ambulance to the hospital, concerned and praying as I was checked out.
Coach Meyer came straight over to the University of Kentucky Medical Center, not far from the stadium, immediately following the game. He told me that my first question when I briefly came to on the field was, “Did I hold on to the ball?” I did. And my second, in the hospital, was, “Did we win?” We did, and John Brantley had filled in nicely for me in the fourth quarter. I found that to be consoling. Of course, I hated that I hadn’t finished the game alongside my teammates, but I was pleased they had gone on to win.
Coach started telling me about the game, which my family says was about the time the fog started to lift for me. The medical staff kept me up all night, not letting me fall asleep, and took really good care of me. I checked out fine and returned to Gainesville the next day.
It’s noteworthy, for reasons that don’t immediately come to mind, that both times I went to Lexington, I came back injured. Those were good games, and I’d love to have them everywhere I played, but I just wish I could have the good games minus the injuries.
Thank goodness we had a bye week following the Kentucky game, because our next game was in Baton Rouge. We were ranked number one, and they were ranked number four, and despite our loss there in 2007, I loved playing in Tiger Stadium.
Florida flew in a concussion specialist from Pittsburgh to look at me. After evaluating me, he determined that one of the most important factors for me to be able to play again was that I be completely free of headaches for a certain number of days. To this end, the prescribed course of treatment was that I had to sit in my darkened apartment for days with no stimulation. No television, no reading. Just dark with no input of any kind whatsoever.
The LSU fans didn’t seem to have my new cell-phone number, so that helped keep things quiet too.
I was so worried that I wouldn’t get to play that I did everything I could to stay quiet and in the dark. I wasn’t worried about playing again. I’d been hit plenty of times—hard—but had always bounced back. I didn’t fear playing or being hit. I just prayed that the Lord would allow me to play—quickly. In keeping with my personality, that if a little is good then a lot is better, I stayed totally quiet and dark for the week. It was hard, but I tried to keep my thoughts quiet as well.
After our bye weekend, I was allowed to start to take on some light activities.
There was so much speculation as to whether I would play or not. It seems that everyone in the media had an opinion, which they were more than happy to share. I didn’t care. I don’t pay attention to all the noise out there, since everyone always seems to have an opinion, whether the person has the facts or not. For me, it was easy. I was going to do everything I could to get out there—by doing what the medical professionals were telling me to do.
The guessing continued right up until game time. Coach Addazio put together two game plans, one for me, and one for Johnny Brantley. I was worried about the flight, since, as with roller coasters, my head doesn’t always respond well to flights, but as it turned out, the flight wasn’t an
issue.
After a number of tests, the doctors cleared me to play the morning of the game, but Coach took me aside before we got on the bus to go to Tiger Stadium.
“I’m not going to let you play,” he said. He had tears in his eyes—he knew how much it meant to me.
“I have to play,” I responded.
He cut me off. “I keep asking myself, if you were Nate, would I let you play? I keep saying, ‘No.’ I can’t let you play.” He really wanted to win, but he was unwilling to take a chance with my health.
“But they cleared me, and I haven’t had headaches in days,” I countered. “There’s no reason for me not to play.”
“No headaches?”
“No, Coach. No headaches.” A headache had been starting to set in, but for all I know, it was from stress or a migraine, not the concussion.
Coach Meyer softened and said that we’d decide after warm-ups. All other things being equal, he would have erred on the side of caution, but I know my desire to play was eating at him.
I was praying in the locker room that the headache, which had been getting worse and worse, would simply go away. It didn’t. I could barely see by the end of pregame warm-ups, it was hurting so badly.
Even though I don’t recommend for anyone to ever do this, I played.
We started our first drive from our own seven yard line. Coach sent me in, and then, the moment I crossed the wide, white sideline and ran across the twenty-five yard line (Tiger Stadium is the only stadium I ever played in that paints the numbers every five yards instead of merely every ten) toward the end zone, my head completely cleared. No pain. I don’t know if it was the adrenaline, the warm wishes from the LSU faithful directed my way, or the Lord’s touch, but the pain was gone instantaneously. It never came back.
I only carried a couple of times, anyway, as the coaches didn’t want me to take any more blows. We marched eighty-two yards on that first drive and kicked a field goal to take a 3–0 lead, and then they tied it in the second quarter. We really struggled on offense, but our defense stepped up in a big way. Right before halftime, I hit Riley Cooper on a twenty-four-yard touchdown, and our defense made that touchdown stand up. We won, 13–3. It was a great return to Baton Rouge.
We were very happy heading back to Gainesville. Certainly we would have liked to have done more on offense, but we were limited with what we could do because of my injury. So much of our offense was predicated upon the possibility that I would rush the ball, but everyone knew—especially LSU’s defense—that wasn’t going to happen. Not that night. At the end of the day, that was a good win against a very good team.
We had things to work on that week but were upbeat as we practiced. We had gotten over a major hurdle without being at full strength.
The game against Arkansas was remarkable the following week at our place. My head had been totally fine ever since I stepped onto the field at Louisiana State. Arkansas played well. It was a game to remember, even though our fans seemed less than pleased that it was so close. The whole game consisted of missed opportunities, which kept it close. We had an uncharacteristic number of fumbles and missed tackles, and for a while it felt like the Ole Miss game of 2008 all over again. There was no way I was going to let that happen. No way.
At one point, I hit Chris Rainey, who was wide open on a swing route. There was no one between him and a seven-yard touchdown except for the safety, and Chris totally made the guy miss. As the safety was falling away, he stuck his foot out and kicked the ball, which caused the ball to fly out of Chris’s grip, up into the air, and onto the turf. They recovered. No one else was even in the area to tackle Chris, and yet a stray foot caused a turnover. Later on, Aaron Hernandez fumbled after a long reception on which he’d made a great effort, and still later I was stripped of the ball and they recovered the fumble. Just totally bizarre stuff, which was what made it reminiscent of the Ole Miss game from the previous year. Here they were with the worst statistical defense in the conference, and we couldn’t put them away. In fact, we were trailing until late in the game.
We tied the game in the fourth quarter at 20 on a great play by Jeff Demps, and then we got the ball back. On that final drive, we were trying to score and leave as little time remaining on the clock as possible. In addition to our four turnovers and numerous dropped passes, our defense had even struggled, surprisingly. After saving us against LSU, they had an off day against a very solid Arkansas offense. Because of that, we didn’t want to leave any time for Arkansas’s offense to get back on the field.
I felt that it was our turn on offense to step up—I mean we had turned the ball over an unacceptable four times. I told Coach to give me the ball; I was in one of those crazy moods.
I ended up throwing for thirty yards on that drive and rushing for twenty-two more. On a third and ten play, we called time-out and then ran a play to Coop, where if it was man-to-man, one-on-one, he was going to run a stop route and I would put it right on him. The defender would think Coop was running a fade to the end zone, but instead we’d just get the first down.
If they weren’t in man, then we’d probably go to Hernandez on an in cut. They gave us man-to-man and blitzed. Coop tripped coming off the line, but he scrambled up and I hit him in the chest for a first down. A huge play. Of course, the pass was at chest level because he was going to the ground again, and he actually made the catch of my low pass while on a knee—an amazing grab.
At the end of our drive, Caleb Sturgis kicked a field goal to win it with nine seconds left. I didn’t open my eyes until I heard the crowd roar; 23–20.
Sure, it shouldn’t have been that close, but it was a fun game and a gut check for us. We had been confronted with the Ole Miss game, the 2009 version, only this time we’d survived. We had to find a way to win that game, and we did. I was proud of our team.
On the one hand, it was troubling to have struggled with Arkansas. On the other, every team has the occasional game that they simply have to escape. When you’re on the field scraping it out, you’re not thinking about “style points” or coaches voting or what people on ESPN will say when the highlight reel rolls; you’re thinking about winning the game. A win is a win, and we’d gotten exactly that. While there was a mild sense of anxiety over the game itself, we felt that we would have a chance to correct any shortcomings moving forward. We were still undefeated, and that was what mattered.
Chapter Twenty
Finishing Strong
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, and I have kept the faith.
—2 TIMOTHY 4:7
I knew Mississippi State would be interesting. We were looking forward to seeing Coach Mullen and hoped that our knowing him as well as we did would counter any advantage he might gain by how well he knew our schemes and our personnel.
Therefore, going in, everyone knew that Coach Mullen was going to design some stuff for us because he knew our physical limitations and tendencies, and, man, did he deliver.
The game started off well. In the second quarter, I rushed for a touchdown to tie Herschel Walker for the all-time SEC rushing touchdown record. But things went downhill from there. We were ahead 13–3 right before halftime and were driving against the Mississippi State defense, trying to put the game away. We were inside their ten yard line. Coach Mullen knew exactly what my check was on this certain play, so they showed like they were blitzing but didn’t. I threw it up to the corner at the goal line as they anticipated. It was tipped and intercepted by Johnthan Banks, who ran it back one hundred yards for a touchdown, making it 13–10 going into the locker room at halftime.
A bad play by me, and now we were only up three. There was clearly some dissention in the locker room. It was not going well, and making matters worse on the other side of the ball was the fact that Brandon Spikes wasn’t playing due to a hurt groin.
Finally, in the fourth quarter, we scored a touchdown on a run by Chris Rainey to put us up by nine and give us some breathing room. On Mississippi State’s next
possession, Dustin Doe returned an interception for a touchdown to put the game away. I’m thankful that he did, because I then threw another interception that was returned for a touchdown. Coach Mullen definitely had my number that night.
Even before my last interception, it had already been a tough night. A defensive leader had a pointed comment for me on the sidelines, which didn’t sit well with any of us on offense. For four years we had always stuck together, with no finger pointing between the offense and defense, regardless of what was happening. I don’t know what it was that was bothering him, but the Pounceys responded to him, and things started to heat up on the sidelines. I grabbed the Pounceys and pulled them away, but at the same time I was just as mad about the situation as they were.
We ended up winning, but it wasn’t a good feeling for anybody; we were all a bit empty. I was really upset by it all after the game—my interceptions, our poor play, the moment on the sidelines. Afterward my family encircled me, under the stadium, helping me deal with it all.
From the outer edges of our group I could hear somebody asking to get through to me—Dan Mullen. He was great. He took me aside, put his arm around me, and encouraged me with thoughts both football-related and otherwise. It was a moment I’ll never forget.
He didn’t ask about my eye black, however. It was Ephesians 4:32, which was particularly appropriate for that day—“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted . . .” I’d heard that he had started an optional coaches’ Bible study for the Mississippi State staff, which is impressive. It’s tough to give up staff-meeting time, but he did. It’s simply amazing what God will do with relationships if we allow Him to work in our lives.