Written by Frank Schwab at YahooSports.com
When Seattle Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette fell to the turf in Dallas and didn’t move last season, and when he stayed down for a long time afterward, you knew he had just suffered a serious injury.
As it turns out, the hit ended Lockette’s career.
Lockette, who will turn 30 on May 21, will announce his retirement on Wednesday, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said. It’s a tough blow for Lockette, who worked himself onto the Seahawks’ roster as an undrafted free agent, only to have his career end on one of the most devastating hits in recent NFL history.
The hit from Dallas Cowboys safety Jeff Heath while Lockette covered a punt was so bad, Lockette said earlier this year he could have died.
“The doctor told me that pretty much my skull, all the muscles, all the ligaments that connect my vertebrae and the cartilage between that — so the cartilage is out, the ligaments torn. He said if I would have stood up then, the weight of my head, left, right, front, back, I would have died,” Lockette said in March, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The injury still lingers, according to an ESPN report:
According to #Seahawks sources, WR Riccardo Lockette is unable to rotate his head following neck injury and no choice but to retire
Lockette, in a video, repeatedly thanked the emergency personnel on hand for “perfectly” managing the situation to keep him alive. He repeated that had things gone just a little differently he could have died on the field.
“If one of my teammates would have come over and pulled my arm, I would have died,” he said, via the Post-Intelligencer. “Just barely. If the returner at the time would have broke a couple tackles and they would have moved and fell on me, I would have died on that field.”
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