It was a thunderous special teams collision.  Rutgers Scarlet Knight Eric LeGrand, a 6’2, 275-pound defensive tackle collided head-on with Army Black Knight Malcolm Brown, a 5’11, 180-pound slotback.  Both players were sent tumbling to the ground.  Only one of them got up.  Malcolm Brown was fine; Eric LeGrand was paralyzed from the neck down.

“Eric’s spirits were as good as you could expect and he was cognizant of me being there and his mom and everybody,” said Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, who spent the night with LeGrand and his family.  “I saw him before surgery and after surgery, and he’s a fighter.”  He’ll have a lot of fighting to do, with a spinal cord injury like that.  Especially scary is the fact that LeGrand has no movement below the neck.

“Kickoffs are dangerous.  There have been fewer and fewer neck injuries the last five years.  Most of the (catastrophic) injuries have been head injuries.  There’s been a reduction of the head injuries because coaches are teaching the kids not to put their head down and tackle properly.  But at the last minute you don’t know what the kid was thinking,” said Dr. Fred Mueller of the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.  “That’s important because some kids have fractured cervical vertebrae but they come through with no paralysis.  But this one sounds like he already has no movement at all so I don’t know how that’s going to turn out.  If he still has paralysis after the surgery, he’ll still have to go through rehab and find out what can be recovered.  He’s in for a long recovery, no doubt.”

Tags: Eric LeGrand, Rutgers, Army, Rutgers versus Army football game, Malcolm Brown, Rugters football player paralyzed, accidents, football, college football, sports, collisions, Greg Schiano, New Jersey

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