Ex-Chiefs QB Alex Smith shares a look at his rebuilt leg during inspirational Ted Talk
Former Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith gave a Ted Talk about his recovery from a horrific leg injury and how it has shaped his outlook on life.
Smith, who was the first overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft, mentioned his struggles early in his career in San Francisco as he dealt with self-doubts, poor play and injuries.
But things changed under coach Jim Harbaugh, who offered advice to the 49ers that helped Smith, who was dealing with fears of not living up to being a high draft pick
“He would say, ‘Play as hard as you can, as fast as you can for as long as you can and don’t worry,’” Smith recalled.
Another influence was linebacker Blake Costanzo who would get in the face of 49ers teammates and say, “I’m gonna live today, are you?”
Smith said, “He was a guy who approached the game by accepting every challenge he faced. Just live.”
Then after two bones were broken in his leg during a game with Washington, Smith faced 17 surgeries as doctors worked to save his limb, which was ravaged by flesh-eating bacteria.
Smith recalled how his wife, Elizabeth, repeatedly told him how great his leg was looking after surgeons removed part of his thigh muscle and put it on the right leg where the bacteria had been removed.
A large white sheet blocked Smith’s view of the leg, because he couldn’t bear to look. While he took heart in Elizabeth’s updates Smith admitted he was afraid to see the leg.
After leaving the hospital, Smith was rehabbing at the Center for the Intrepid when met a physical therapist named Johnny Owens..
“Then he did something that changed my recovery completely: he handed me a football,” Smith said. “You see, after spending years and years of my life with a football in my hands, I hadn’t touched one for months since my injury.
“It was like reattaching a lost limb. He told me to throw from one knee. I zipped one to him, a better kind of spiral. From that point on, if you put a ball in my hands, I felt stronger, I did my exercises better. I can’t explain it but I felt lighter. I felt alive.
“After that first visit, I felt like I had permission to dream again. I thought about getting back out onto the field. If I did get back, great. If I don’t, who cares? At least I was living for something. And that’s the mentality that carried me through my recovery through numerous setbacks, both physically and mentally.”
‘It was grotesque’
Those four, Harbaugh, Costanzo, Owen and Elizabeth, all helped Smith return to the NFL last fall, nearly two years after the terrible injury.
While Smith put in months of hard work to rehab his leg (as shown in ESPN’s “Project 11” documentary), he talked about the other part of his recovery.
“I’m proud that I made it back out onto the field. But I’m more proud of what got me there,” Smith said. “Not the physical journey but the mental one. I’ve learned that so much of the anxiety that holds us back in life, it’s self-inflicted. We make it worse on ourselves. And it’s OK if we need somebody to help us snap out of it. For me, that was my wife, a military guy, a maniac linebacker or an eccentric coach. They taught me that I had to see my fears for what they are. ...
“First, I had to pull back that white sheet. For weeks and weeks I’ve been hearing my wife tell me how great it looked. She helped me get to that point. I was ready. And when I finally did it ... it looked way worse than I’d expected.
“What I saw was not cool. It was grotesque, mangled and deformed. All kinds of purple and blue and red.”
Then Smith showed photos of his leg at its worst, and then stopped to pull up his pant leg and show the audience what it looks like now.
“This thing that once represented everything I feared, everything I had lost, it’s probably the thing I’m most proud of in my life outside of my wife and kids,” Smith said. “So yeah, I guess she was right. It is pretty cool. These scars, they’re not just a reminder of everything I’ve been through, but more so everything that’s in front of me. They stare me in my face, challenging me to be myself, to help others out of their own spirals when I can.
“Now you might not have a leg that looks like this. But I bet you’ve got some scars. And my hope for you is this: Look at them, own them. They’re the best reminder you’ll ever have that there’s a whole world out there. And we’ve got a whole lot of living left to do.”
Here is the Ted Talk, but a warning: graphic photos of Smith’s leg are shown.
