The seminal snapshot of a decade spent in football arrived Nov. 7, 2010, that day in Philadelphia when two defensive backs treated Austin Collie’s 6-foot, 205-pound body like a crash test dummy. It was the Smack! Smack! of consecutive hits then it was silence, with Collie lying on the turf, unconscious for nearly 10 minutes, arms frozen like a corpse.
Peyton Manning knelt beside him and said a prayer while a stadium and a team and a fanbase watching back home all wondered the exact same thing.
Is he ever going to get up? Is he ever going to play football again?