Curtis Stock
The Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON — “A miracle, I think. You watch the replay, you watch him hit the ground. The only reason he fumbled the ball was because his right arm, the one he was holding the ball in, had gone numb. Yet, he still had the presence to fall on the ball. Then he’s hit again while he’s on the ground.
He has a broken neck. And then a couple days later to be up and walking …”, Dan McKinnon, Eskimos manager of football administration and Canadian scouting.
Inevitably, the conversation was the same.
“Come on ma,” pleaded Jason Tucker. “Let me play football.”
And, just as she had done a hundred times before, Jason’s mother, Joyce, lips pursed tight, would just shake her head no.
Back then, back when Tucker was in junior high, the Friday nights of autumn were the worst. Throughout the United States, but especially in places like Jason’s home state of Texas, congregations of fans would pack stadiums to watch the religion of high school football.
And Tucker’s older uncles all played football, so every Friday night Tucker, his cousins and his mom were there to watch.
That’s when Jason Tucker really felt the urge bubble up from his gut until it got stuck, a thick lump, lodged in his throat.
“Ma …”
“No Jason,” momma Tucker would reply, not needing to hear anymore.
“If you play football you’ll just get hurt.”
Unfortunately, 20 years later, Jason’s mother would be all too right.
Two months ago, on July 25, on a sticky hot night in Hamilton, after catching a little two-yard pass, Tucker cradling the ball in the nook of his right arm, he and Hamilton Tiger-Cat defender Jykine Bradley’s helmets collided during a Canadian Football League game.
Instantly, as if it had been sawed clean off at the shoulder, Tucker’s right arm went numb, causing him to drop the football. Instinctively, he pounced on the loose ball, then two Hamilton players pounced on him.
Tucker lay there motionless, his helmet buried in the turf, his body awkwardly folded across his right arm.
The entire stadium went dead quiet, a long pause left hanging in the thick air.
The Eskimos head athletic therapist,
T.D. Forss, and his assistant, Nate Hay, were first on the scene.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” said Forss, crouching low beside Tucker’s head.
“My right arm is numb,” answered Tucker, as calmly as if saying his pants fit fine but, geez, the shoes are a little tight.
“He was amazingly calm,” says Eskimo equipment manager Dwayne Mandrusiak. “Other guys you see the panic and the fear in their eyes. Not Jason.”
No, not Jason. With him the attitude never changes. The same off the field as on. Even now.
“He never complains,” says Dan McKinnon, the Eskimos manager of football administration and Canadian scouting, who also sprinted onto the field to check on Tucker’s condition.
“All he said was, ‘I don’t feel good. It hurts,’ ” says McKinnon, who was also Tucker’s receiver coach for five years.
Back in Edmonton, Tucker’s wife, Giesla, started screaming at the TV.
“Get up Jason. Get up. Please Jason. Get up.”
The spinal cord is a twisted braid of nervous tissue. About 44 cm long, no fatter than a piece of licorice, extending from the base of the brain down the middle of the back to near the waist, the spinal cord is the two-way information highway where mind and body connect. It is how we are able to move; how we are able to feel sensation.
Studies estimate 40 cases of spinal cord injuries per million population happen every year. By now, Forss was going through the hallmarks, hoping he hadn’t found another, but dreading the reality.
Maybe Tucker was going to get lucky. Maybe it was only a ‘burner,’ a stretching or impingement of a nerve that caused the numbness.
But when Forss gently palpitated the spinous process looking for centre line tenderness and then did some soft isometric testing, he was pretty sure he was dealing with something much more serious.
“We didn’t know, but we suspected,” says Forss.
Fifteen minutes passed. Eskimos team physician Dr. Jeff Robinson was there. So was the Hamilton team doctor, David Levy, and the Tiger-Cats training staff, who had been attending to Bradley, who also went down hard, but was able to get up on his own.
“The only way I knew I still had my right arm was because I was laying on it,” Tucker says. “I couldn’t move it.”
Players were on their knees. Some held hands. The ambulance was on the field, its amber lights bodefully blinking in the night. Only then did they move Tucker, rolling him over onto his back, removing his helmet and shoulder pads and putting on a thick neck collar.
“When I got on my back I slowly started getting some feeling back in my right arm,” Tucker says. “So I thought it must not be too bad.
“I heard someone say, ‘He’s going to be all right. He’s moving everything. All his limbs are working.’ ”
Still thinking it was something that would go away, Tucker never for a second thought about Darryl Stingley, Kevin Everett, Mike Utley or Reggie Brown — NFL players that had suffered serious spinal cord injuries.
Nor did he think about teammate Brandon Guillory, who had to have surgery to repair spinal cord damage just last year.
Not even Michael Irvin. Tucker was on the field the October 1999 afternoon when his former Dallas Cowboy teammate’s career ended, when the Philadelphia ‘City of Brotherly Love’ crowd — where Santa Claus was booed and pelted with snowballs during a game in 1968 — cheered the hit by Eagles safety Tim Hauck, getting louder the longer Irvin lay twisted and motionless on the Veterans Stadium turf.
“I wasn’t ever thinking it was a broken neck,” Tucker says.
Put onto a spine board, Tucker was silently lifted into the ambulance.
“He told me, ‘Don’t worry about me; worry about winning the game,’ ” says Eskimos head coach Danny Maciocia.
“We were the ones who were all worked up. Not Jason. His main concern was that he wanted to get in touch with his wife.”
“I knew she would be upset,” Tucker says of his wife, who teaches Spanish to children at Holy Cross Christian Academy in Burleson, Texas. “I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be all right.”
McKinnon got into the ambulance with Tucker. “Call Giesla,” Tucker asked McKinnon.
Handed the phone, Tucker, still amazingly calm, told his wife: “I’m in good hands. Everything will be fine. Have faith in God.”
“That’s Tuck,” says his roommate and Eskimo kicker/punter Noel Prefontaine. “He’s the same on the football field as he is playing Play Station in the living room. He just doesn’t get excited about too many things. Very laid back. Down to earth. I think that’s one of the reasons why he is such a prolific football player. And such a great human being.”
When the ambulance arrived at Hamilton General Hospital the staff was ready and waiting.
“Incredible really,” continues McKinnon. “Have you been to a hospital lately? There was no waiting. Dr. Levy had phoned ahead to alert them about a possible spinal injury. I’m sure the way they took care of it prevented anything grave from happening.”
Just after 10 p.m., Tucker was taken for X-rays and an MRI. While he waited for the results, McKinnon, pacing, took calls from Tucker’s mother and one of Tucker’s uncles, one he used to watch play.
Shortly after midnight, they had the results. Tucker had not only fractured the C6 and C7 vertebrae near the base of his neck, he had also dislocated them.
“I was like alright. Now what? Fractured… Wow. Dislocated… It was like I was almost in awe or something. I couldn’t believe it,” Tucker
says.
Again, Tucker’s first thought was Giesla and their four young daughters: Jaelyn, 7, Kendahl, 4, London, 2 and Micah, six months.
This was one call Tucker didn’t want to make. He had told his wife everything was going to be fine. How was he going to tell her he had broken his neck?
“Giesla was pretty hysterical. She was crying. I knew it was bad news, but I wanted to try and put her at ease.”
Maciocia, team president Rick LeLacheur and his wife, Joan Forge, had now arrived. Tucker, who had been listening to his iPod, wanted to know the score. Told Edmonton won 19-13, Tucker smiled.
At 9 a.m., Tucker went in for surgery. The operation took four hours. The two fractured vertebrae were fused; a metal plate, fastened by four screws, tied it all together.
The Eskimos flew Giesla into Hamilton along with their youngest daughter. Tucker’s mother was flown into Edmonton to look after the three oldest children.
Two days later, Tucker was walking.
“A miracle, I think,” says McKinnon. “You watch the replay, you watch him hit the ground. The only reason he fumbled the ball was because his right arm, the one he was holding the ball in, had gone numb. Yet, he still had the presence to fall on the ball.
“Then he’s hit again while he’s on the ground. He has a broken neck. And then a couple days later to be up and walking.”
Recovering his fumble with a broken neck remains one of the most remarkable plays of the year.
Tucker, however, just shrugs.
“Just a football move. Natural instinct took over,” he says nonchalantly, even after having seen the replays that have marvelled so many others.
“Get the ball back. Secure it. Go from there. Worry about the rest later.”
Whomp. Whomp. Clang.
It’s dark. Almost midnight. Jason Tucker is hitting golf balls in his backyard. Noel Prefontaine is trying to teach him the flop shot.
Whomp. Whomp.
Even though he wears a stiff, white cervical collar that obstinately restricts his movement, Jason Tucker, as always, still manages to look at the bright side.
“It makes me keep my head down when I’m chipping golf balls,” he says, a warm autumn holding tight in Edmonton.
Golf, even chipping, is not an activity Tucker is supposed to be doing right now. For the next month, until he gets the collar taken off, he’s not supposed to be doing much of anything.
On the surface that wouldn’t seem to be much of a problem. Except on the football field, Tucker is seldom in a hurry to get from one place to the next — he doesn’t walk, he ambles. But Tucker is an athlete and athletes are a restless bunch.
There are a dozen Eskimos who fervently play golf. Tucker is as hooked as any of them.
In fact, golf is about the only thing that can get Tucker stirred up.
“Especially the 16th hole at Raven Crest,” he laughs.
Golf is a game he has only recently discovered. When his mom wouldn’t let him play football, basketball was the game Tucker set his sights on.
“I thought I was going to be a basketball player. I thought I was going to play in the NBA,” says Tucker, an easy man to meet, affable, a ready, easy-going smile.
“Every weekend I was on a court somewhere playing basketball. I thought basketball was going to be my ticket to be somebody and do something.”
But one day, in a junior high basketball game, Tucker went up to take a shot and somebody came underneath, taking Tucker’s legs out from under him. Tucker came down hard and broke his arm.
“That’s when I told my mom, ‘Now what? You didn’t want me to play football because you said I’d get hurt. Now I’ve got a broken arm and I wasn’t playing football.’ ”
So mom gave in and Jason was finally able to start playing football.
Tucker continued to play basketball and added football to his repetoire in high school. Things went well, so well, in fact, that he was offered scholarships by both Baylor and Texas Christian University (TCU) in both sports.
Tucker chose TCU, flourishing in his junior and sophomore seasons, teasing scouts and TCU with what he would do in his senior football season.
It never happened. Tucker made the single biggest mistake of his life — he fell for the lure of an illegal, quick money scheme that had sucked his roommates and hundreds of other students at other colleges into its web.
“They knew college kids needed the money. It was supposed to be a one-time thing,” Tucker recalls.
It was. Tucker got caught the first time he got involved. The only time, in fact, he had been in any kind of serious trouble.
But here he was charged with fraud. Because the police were looking for the leaders of the racketeering scheme, Tucker got probation for his testimony. But he was still suspended from playing football for what would have been his final year at TCU.
Touted as a second or possibly even a late first-round NFL draft pick, Tucker’s status plummeted. Suddenly, no team seemed interested.
Still invited to the NFL Combine — after running a 4.55-second 40-yard sprint and showing a vertical jump of 37 inches — Tucker did get some interviews. One of the first was with rough, gruff Bill Parcells, then the head coach of the New York Jets.
“One of the first things he asks me is why the F should I take a chance on you?” says Tucker, who doesn’t use the F word himself. “And who the F do you think you are? Are you going to F up again?”
Not surprisingly, the Jets never came calling. Tucker’s one-incident past now seemed like a red flag stamped on his forehead. He was finally selected in the sixth round by the Cincinnati Bengals.
“What I did was very wrong. It wasn’t who I was. It’s not the person I am,” Tucker says.
“It cost me from being a first- or second-round draft to being a sixth-round pick. It could have cost me not playing football at all. I could have gone to jail.”
Tucker considers it a turning point in his life.
“I could have gone in the totally opposite direction. It was an eye-opening experience. It’s made me a better person. It gave me the strength to live my life the right way. With a faith in God.”
Tucker made it through the 1998 Bengals training camp. He played in the first pre-season game. Then he pulled his hamstring, an injury that takes time to heal — more time than NFL clubs have in the pre-season for sixth-round draft picks. On Aug. 19, Tucker was released.
“It was a bad time. I was one of the last cuts so all the other teams had their rosters set. My folks had just driven up from Texas and brought my car. I had just proposed.”
Tucker left Cincinnati at 7 a.m. He drove non-stop, 15 hours from Cincinnati to Burleson.
“It hurt. I was a 22-year-old kid who had his dreams taken away.”
Fortunately, the Green Bay Packers liked what they had seen. Midway through the season, the Packers added Tucker to their practice roster.
But that’s as far as it went.
The Brett Favre-led Packers had won the Super Bowl in 1997 and then lost it to Denver in 1998. Needing room on the roster for a tight end, Tucker was released. It was the week before Christmas.
But in 1999 the Dallas Cowboys came calling. The Cowboys were one of the teams thinking about drafting Tucker. Tommie Robinson, who was an offensive assistant with the Cowboys, had been Tucker’s receiver coach at TCU.
Tucker had two very good years with the Cowboys. He also bought a ranch. Originally 650 acres, it has since doubled in size.
With Troy Aikman at quarterback and Emmitt Smith the running back, Rocket Ismail was the Cowboys’ leading receiver. Tucker, who caught 23 passes for 439 yards — averaging almost 20 yards a catch — was second.
Deion Sanders returned punts, Tucker the kickoffs — 2
2 of them for an average of 27.9 yards, including one for 79 yards.
In each of his last two regular-season games that year, Tucker turned in 100-yard plus performances as a receiver. Against New Orleans he was the NFL’s offensive player of the week, catching seven for 128 yards, scoring a touchdown and returning six kickoffs for 203 yards. His 331 all-purpose yards tied him then for ninth place for most yards in a single game in NFL history.
The following year, with Randall Cunningham and Aikman now sharing the quarterback duties, Tucker’s receptions were down but he was now the team’s No. 1 kickoff returner — 51 for 1,099 yards, including one for 90 yards.
But 2000 was the first of three straight
5-11 records for ‘America’s Team.’ The following year Tucker was the team’s last cut. Team owner Jerry Jones gave Tucker the old line: “The team was going in a different direction.”
Tucker worked out for a couple of NFL clubs in 2001, but nothing happened.
Then Paul Jones, the Eskimos director of player personnel called. It was a short conversation. Tucker was in Edmonton the following season.
And a CFL star was born.
While the Eskimos lost the 2002 Grey Cup 25-16 to the Montreal Alouettes, Tucker was Edmonton’s leading receiver. His first year in Edmonton was also the first of four West division and CFL All-Star selections.
When Edmonton won the Grey Cup in 2003, Tucker was the game’s MVP with seven catches for 132 yards and two touchdowns.
In 2004, he caught 67 passes for 1,632 yards — the fourth-highest total in franchise history.
In 2005, he led the CFL with 1,411 yards from 89 receptions including one, against Winnipeg, for 105 yards, the longest in team history. And the Eskimos won another Grey Cup.
In 2006 he went over the 1,000-yard mark again with 1,321 receiving yards.
“He handles pressure so well,” says Mandrusiak. “That’s why he’s so great in the Grey Cup. What you see is what you get. He never changes.”
While most receivers get wide-eyed when the ball gets close, Edmonton linebacker Shannon Garrett said you can stare in Tucker’s eyes and still have no idea.
Houdini with a football. Materializing out of nowhere. Now you don’t see it. Now you do.
Ricky Ray-to-Tucker was going to be a constant refrain in Edmonton. Especially the corner route. Fans knew it was coming. Coaches and defenders knew it was coming. And nobody seemed to be able to do anything about it.
But last year was all wrong and Tucker was never right. He ran on one leg, battling a torn meniscus in his left knee that required surgery midway through the season.
Bad as that was, his back was even worse. At season’s end an MRI revealed two bulging discs.
Doctors told him to rest but Tucker refused. He played, in pain, until the team was officially eliminated from the playoffs.
This season started off better. The highlight for him came on July 3 against Calgary at Commonwealth Stadium when he made what many people believe is the catch of the year. With less than a minute to go in the game, Calgary ahead 31-27, quarterback Ray went back to pass. He pumped once, then let it fly — to the corner, of course, where Tucker took it in one-handed.
Instantaneously, Tucker was hit hard by Calgary’s Wes Lysack. The collision knocked Tucker’s helmet off, sending it rolling across the end zone.
But Tucker held onto the ball, which he matter-of-factly showed to the official in case there was any doubt. Then he got up and ambled back to the bench — like the underside of a pillow, cool as always.
“I like to think of myself as a blue-collar guy,” says Tucker. “Do what has to be done. No questions asked. Come to work. Get the job done.”
Tucker made an emotional and miraculous return to the Eskimos locker-room less than a week after his surgery in July, just in time to inspire his teammates to victory against the B.C. Lions at Commonwealth Stadium. As Tucker watched from a safe distance, members of the Eskimos’ receiving corps showed support for their fallen comrade by wearing undershirts with Tucker’s No. 83 embroidered on the front. After making a circus catch and then being clobbered by a B.C. defender, Kamau Peterson lifted his jersey to reveal the undershirt to Tucker and the rest of the crowd. His fellow receivers followed suit throughout the game.
Tucker has stayed with the team for the most part since his injury, and is often seen at practices standing on the sidelines wearing his now-familiar cervical collar.
“I just want to be part of the team,” Tucker says of his decision to spend most of time with his team in Edmonton while the rest of his family is back in Texas.
The collar will be removed by the end of the month. At that time, doctors will re-evaluate his injury and a course of treatment and rehabilitation will be determined.
Tucker says he would definitely love to play again, but if doctors recommend against it, he can live with it.
“I’ve had a good career. I’d miss it. Edmonton has been great to me. I’ve really enjoyed it. …
“But right now playing isn’t something I’m worried about. I just want to get healed. Then I’ll think about the playing aspect later.”
If he can’t play, Tucker says he’d like to coach. Having a psychology degree could not hurt in dealing with so many different personalities, he figures.
“Here. South of the border. Wherever. If I was offered a coaching job I’d take it.
“I’ve been around a lot of great coaches,” says Tucker, who had Wes Chandler as his receivers coach in his two years with the Dallas Cowboys and Dan McKinnon, Mike Kelly and Jacques Chapdelaine in Edmonton.
“I think you are better at the game when you are a student of the game. Those guys all taught me a lot. So did Michael Irvin,” he says of his former Cowboys teammate whose career ended with a neck injury.
Whatever he decides, he has the support of wife Giesla.
“One hundred per cent,” says Tucker. “She says it’s up to me. If I decide to do it. If I can do it.”
Courtesy: www.edmontonjournal.com
