Don Heupel / AP

Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett lays on the field after a devastating injury on Sunday.

When I saw those interviews with the Buffalo players on Monday, it took me back 26 years ago to that Detroit locker room in the Pontiac Silverdome, and I was reminded of the conversations I had with the emotionally shaken teammates. I saw grown men with tears on their cheeks, lumps in their throats and fear in their eyes.

“The Lord has blessed us,” said Mike Utley’s teammate Toby Caston. “We’re healthy, we can walk, we can run, we can cry. At times like this, it makes you realize just how lucky you really are. When something like this happens, it’s like a piece of humble pie has been shoved down your throat and it doesn’t taste very good, either.

“You remember how quickly it can all be taken away from you,” Caston said. “You realize that it can all be gone just like that. But you don’t ask the Lord why. You just gotta know that He knows all. You just gotta believe that He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

On the other side of the locker room, another teammate, Eric Andolsek sat teary eyed on his locker room stool sorting through similar feelings. “Gawd, Mike’s such a tough guy,” Andolsek told me. “You gotta understand, Mike’s such a tough, tough guy. Then you see something like this happen to him, and it makes you realize … man, you just never know. You just never know.”

Fate is a strange thing. Within two years of that November 17^th day in 1991, both Andolsek and Caston would lose their lives in tragic auto accidents, while the man they were crying for, Mike Utley, is alive and well, still paralyzed, but living a full and robust life.

In so many ways, Mike Utley’s life just started after his accident. Utley is an accomplished downhill skier, a wild and crazy outdoorsman who has an unquenched zest for living. If Kevin Everett ends up experiencing only half of the quality of life that Mike Utley now has, he will be a truly blessed man. I hope someday soon, that electric sensation of pain and pleasure races back through his body again. I also hope he will soon have the opportunity to realize that as bad as the world must seem right now, if he can regain any sense of a quality of life, it will always beat the alternative.

Twenty four hours earlier, Everett’s doctors were glumly predicting he might not live. Now they’re hoping he’ll walk out of that Buffalo hospital sometime soon.

The world doesn’t always make much sense. Sometimes the violence and risk that is involved in playing football makes you shiver and wonder why anyone would ever accept the dangerous consequences of such a high risk sport.

But mostly, whenever I am standing on those sidelines up close and personal to this exhilarating, fascinating, frightening sport, what I think of most is how great it would be if all these men really were as invincible as they want to be.

More news

NBC Sports

What's up with Alex and Cam?

  SportsTalk: 49ers quarterback Alex Smith rips on Panthers' second-year QB Cam Newton.

NBC Sports

Sanchez looking over his shoulder at Tebow?

  SportsTalk: Is Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez concerned about being benched for Tim Tebow? It's possible.

Headlines

• Label

PFT: Williams tape may hinder 'Hard Knocks'

PFT Live: Cardinals' DB Campbell is excited

PFT: Polamalu thinks kids should play football

PFT: Vanderjagt attacks kid for 'wide left' taunt?

PFT: Charlie Sheen says he didn't buy LT's ring

PFT Live: Is Cowboys' title window closing?

How does Nicks' injury affect Giants' offense?

SportsTalk: Which teams are under pressure?