There were nights Tony Steward couldn’t sleep. He’d lie awake in bed for hours, writhing in mental and physical pain.
This is what a torn anterior cruciate ligament can do to any athlete: rock your psyche.
And this Buffalo Bills linebacker endured this torturous cycle twice. Steward tore the ACL in one knee his senior year of high school, and then the other as a freshman at Clemson. Each ordeal was excruciating.
“It’s one of those things you don’t want to have to deal with,” said Steward, selected by the Bills in the sixth round of the NFL Draft in May.