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Pro Bowl: 20 years later, the Robert Edwards injury is still a fresh wound in the Patriots’ memory
In 1999, the outstanding rookie suffered a career-changing knee injury.
By
Bernd Buchmasser@BerndBuchmasser Jan 27, 2019, 8:00am EST
From one second to the next, Robert Edwards’ life was changed forever. Before he jumped up to defend a pass in a four-on-four flag football game leading up to the NFL’s 1999
Pro Bowl, he was a star in the making: the
New England Patriots had drafted him with the 18th overall selection just ten months earlier and he immediately had an impact on a team that had to replace lead running back Curtis Martin, who had left for the
New York Jets.
Serving as the Patriots’ new top option in the backfield, the Georgia product saw action in all 17 of his team’s games that season and quickly showed why a first-round pick was invested in him. Edwards touched the football 346 times during his rookie campaign, by far the most on the team, gained 1,507 yards and scored a combined 13 touchdowns on the ground and through the air. In short: he was pretty good in 1998.
So good, in fact, that the NFL sent him to Hawaii to participate in the lead up to the Pro Bowl. No, he was not picked to actually play in the game, but as one of the season’s outstanding rookies, the league invited him to partake in the so-called “Rookie Beach Bowl” alongside other top draft picks like the
Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning or the
Oakland Raiders’ Charles Woodson. Woodson, in fact, was on the same team as Edwards.
Just like the Patriots’ back, he too jumped up to defend Charlie Batch’s pass intended for wide receiver R.W. McQuarters. Woodson and McQuarters got back up, Edwards did not. He landed awkwardly and
did not feel any pain right away — the pain would come later. After he was carried off the field under applause and placed on a buffet table for initial evaluation. The pain started in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Edwards had not only torn three ligaments in his left knee — the ACL, MCL and PCL — and partially tore his LCL tendon as well, he had also suffered major nerve damage. On top of all this, and most serious of all his injuries, he had sliced the artery in his left leg. That is when the then 24-year old was told that his leg might have to be amputated if the blood flow was not sufficiently stopped or the sutures in his artery did not hold.
His dream of playing football again was over either way, according to the doctors, and even if his leg was saved the injury might still severely impact his ability to walk in the future.