SETH'S ROAD TO RECOVERY
`I Have That Desire, Burn to Get Up and Do More'

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of a two-part story on quarterback Seth Russell's devastating neck injury last fall, the surgery to repair the fractured vertebrae and the miraculous road back to leading the Baylor football team to an undefeated 6-0 start and up to No. 6 in the latest coaches' poll:

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

Like a wild horse cramped by the confines of a corral, Seth Russell wanted to break loose and run free. Following surgery to repair his fractured neck last October, he spent just one night in the hospital before retreating to a hotel room in Morgantown, W. Va., to begin his recovery. Ronald Russell, his dad, said he "felt good, wanted to be released . . . . but that was probably the pain meds talking."

"Everybody thinks he's still in traction and all that stuff, but he was really beginning to feel a little bit better," Ronald said. "Of course, it takes about 48 hours for all the pain medicine to wear off. That's when he kind of hit that wall a little bit."

At every turn, any setback, the Baylor quarterback kept pushing through those walls, more determined than ever to get back on the field with his team. Within weeks of the surgery, he was pestering the doctors with "When can I play? When can I throw?"

Dr. Joshua Russell, Seth's older brother and an orthopedic surgeon at WVU Medicine, called Ronald and said, "Dad, Seth is wearing me out. I'm telling him, and y'all need to tell him, too, he cannot do that right now."

Sheepishly, Seth admits that he was "trying to do it by the book . . . and possibly trying to do a little more."

"That's just the itch that every athlete has when they have an injury," he said. "They want to get back. But I knew that with my injury if it didn't heal back properly, there was a chance of it never being the same again. So, I took it as life and death, basically. Not that I was going to die, but if you try to come back too quickly, you might not be able to play again."

The mental part of Seth's recovery got a boost while he was still in Morgantown. In the days following his surgery, he got visits from fellow quarterbacks Skyler Howard of West Virginia and former Baylor All-American and Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III.

Seth and RG3

"Here's a guy that on the gridiron stands opposed, but when crisis hits, he's there alongside," Calvary Chapel Shawn Fraser said of Howard, whose Mountaineers had lost to Baylor in Waco, 62-38, just two weeks prior to his hospital visit. "It's the camaraderie of sports, and it's more importantly the brotherhood within the body of Christ."

Seth was surrounded by his family and now-fiancÃÆ' ©e, Ashleigh James, during his 12-day stay in Morgantown, "but sometimes you want to see new faces," he said.

"Skyler coming by, that just speaks volumes to the way he is and the type of guy he is," Seth said of Howard, who's also from Texas. "And then Robert, taking time out of his day to come down and visit, he has a busy schedule."

It was all God's providence, though, Seth said. West Virginia had played two days earlier at TCU, giving Howard the chance to come by that Saturday the day after the surgery. And the Washington Redskins were on a bye week, so RG3 tweeted that he "had to see how my brother was doing."

"Robert talked to me one-on-one, specifically about the roles and responsibilities of a dad, and about him and his dad," Ronald said. "The things he shared were very personal, and I'm very humbled by it. That was really a special moment."

With all the doctors' early benchmarks hit, Seth was released to go home on Nov. 9. "We probably could have stayed there another week, but Seth was like, `I'm ready to go home.' . . . . I think the big thing that was probably pushing him was being around the guys," his dad said.

Talking with the team the day he returned to Waco, Seth said he just wanted to let the team know he was still walking "and I have the opportunity come back."

"It was a pretty emotional time. (Wide receiver Corey Coleman) was a little cry baby. I think he was crying in the back. No, I love that guy. He Facetimed me the other day."

Eight weeks out, Seth gets to remove the neck brace on Dec. 22, just in time for Christmas and the Bears' Russell Athletic Bowl win over North Carolina in Orlando, Fla.

"It was a little weird, just because it was weak," Seth said. "I was still turning my whole body to look at somebody. But, it was a good feeling, just to know that it's healed. The bones are as healed as they're ever going to be. And for them to tell me that the bones look good, and we can't even tell where the break is, that's amazing."

The healing process was "always ahead of schedule," Ronald said. Seth was cleared for on-field workouts on Feb. 1 and began his final spring training with the Baylor team 24 days later.

"The filling in of everything, the inflammation, everything, it was exhilarating to the doctors," Ronald said. "Because they knew this surgery was one for the books. And the rapidness of his recovery was very encouraging."

While still rehabbing, Seth had a busy spring. He turned 22 on Jan. 27, got engaged March 19 graduated May 14 with a degree in communications and went on a two-week mission trip to Brazil with the Baylor Sports Ministry team.

"What an amazing experience these past few weeks have been," Seth said on Twitter. "I, and 33 other Baylor student-athletes, have spent the last two weeks in Brazil sharing God's love and pouring into children from Maceio and Rio de Janeiro. . . . My prayers for Baylor University are that we never forget that we need God as desperately on our best days as we do on our worst."

Another significant day was June 9, when Seth was totally cleared for contact work by Dr. Sanford Emery, a little over seven months after he performed the surgery.

The next day, "nothing even popped up" on a biomechanics analysis done by Ryan Mentzel from ATLET Athletic Enhancement Training. It's a joint-by-joint screening process, Mentzel said, that's "basically looking at where are you going to compensate, where are you weak, what can we do to get better."

And while "it's not necessary a see-all, end-all . . . on something like a neck, he should have at least had less flection one way or another, or less rotation one way or the other," Mentzel said.

"It all came out even, basically saying that his neck was not necessarily back at full strength, but his neck wasn't having any compensations. And that extends through the shoulder, through the fingertips, through the elbows, and it all came back clean. There are guys coming off ACL surgeries, and they go through this screening and there are red flags all over the place. But there wasn't one thing, and it actually surprised me. All the credit goes to the doctors and the medical staff at Baylor."

Seven weeks later, after only a handful of training sessions with Mentzel, Seth returned for a combine-like workout at an indoor facility in Grand Prairie on July 27.

"I think we ended up training a total of eight days," said Mentzel, a former punter at SMU who has his own training facility in Midlothian. "I warned them before, this isn't like when guys get out of college and they're paying tens of thousands of dollars to do this -- two-a-days, three-a-days, to get ready for that one day of the NFL Combine. I told them, we're squeezing a lot of information into a little bit of time."

Squeezing the combine workout in between offseason training and the start of fall camp, Seth turned in an impressive performance with a 40-inch vertical and 4.389 clocking in the 40-yard dash. Among quarterbacks, those marks would rank among the top two all-time at the NFL Combine.

"I saw some of the comments on Facebook and YouTube, saying there's no way," Mentzel said. "And looking at the video, I don't disagree with that. Every time he ran a time, I was thinking the same thing. But it was something that happened over and over again, so it wasn't a fluke."

Because of time constraints, Seth didn't get in his throwing workout that day. But he returned six days later to an indoor facility in Allen, Texas, working with quarterbacks coach and former Texas A&M quarterback Kevin Murray. In that session, he was clocked at 59 mph on a 15-yard pass, which would rank as the second-highest velocity ever recorded by a quarterback at the NFL Combine.

"Everybody knows, the quarterback position is kind of funny. You've got a lot of good athletes that aren't good quarterbacks," said Mentzel, whose list of training clients includes former Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty of the New York Jets and all-pro linebacker Von Miller of the Denver Broncos. "Seth's different. He's kind of got the best of both worlds. He's athletic, he's strong, he's got a good head on his shoulders, he's got a good family life. He's kind of got the whole package."

After throwing for 2,104 yards and 29 touchdowns and adding 402 yards and six TDs rushing a year ago, Seth was named to preseason watch lists for the Maxwell, Walter Camp, Davey O'Brien, Manning and Unitas Golden Arm awards and Wuerffel Trophy.

In his first game action in nearly 10 months, he was an efficient 14-of-20 for 163 yards and four touchdowns in the first half of a 55-7 win over Northwestern State in the Sept. 2 season opener. Since he wasn't even close to being sacked, his only real hit came on a goal-line stop, creating an awkward uneasiness in the crowd at McLane Stadium.

But, it's exactly what Seth wanted, maybe even needed.

"I was ready for it, it was good," he said, "just to show that I can get back up from it. I'm not going to stay on the ground and wobble off, or feel sorry for myself. I feel like I have that desire, that burn, to get up and do more, because I know the team is looking up to me and I'm looking up to them. They had my back, and I had their back through it all, and I'm going to do whatever I need to do to win the game."

Breaking in a new set of receivers, Seth has thrown for 1,470 yards and 16 touchdowns, added 302 yards and five TDs rushing and led the Bears to an undefeated 6-0 record through the first half of the season. Already bowl-eligible, Baylor goes into Saturday's 2:30 p.m. game at Texas (3-4, 1-3) ranked No. 6 in the coaches' poll and No. 8 by the Associated Press.

After his injury and everything else that's happened over the last year, Seth said, "there's nothing that could happen that would bring this team down."