RENTON, Wash. _ DK Metcalf was just 20 years old.
Twenty-year-olds are supposed to be having the time of their lives. They are not supposed to be unconscious in a hospital bed, unable to walk or talk.
That's where Metcalf was in October 2018. He had a scary brace strapped around his immobilized neck. He had an air mask over his nose and mouth. Intravenous tubes and wires crisscrossed into and around his chiseled, 6-foot-4, 229-pound body. His previously NFL-bound body.
A bone in his neck was broken. So were his football dreams.
He had suffered a cervical fracture on a kickoff return on Oct. 13, 2018, playing for his hometown University of Mississippi in a game at Arkansas. In the hours and days after the injury ended his college career, Metcalf was told his NFL career was over, too _ before it ever started.
"Oh, yes, sir," Metcalf said Wednesday, nodding his head at the memory that fuels and humbles him at the same time. "The first doctor when I was in the hospital told me that.
"Heartbreaking.
"I cried. Because football was taken away from me at that moment."
So that was it. He'd dominated the Southeastern Conference for years at Ole Miss. He was expecting to be a top draft choice in the NFL. He was about to follow his dad, Terrence Metcalf, an offensive lineman who played 78 games for the Chicago Bears from 2002-08.
By the fall of 2018, DeKaylin, the wide receiver's given name, was already was bigger and faster than anybody who would soon try to cover him in the NFL.
Then, while blocking for an Ole Miss teammate on a kickoff return that Saturday night in Arkansas, Metcalf's head snapped back. His neck snapped with it.
He spent the next week contemplating life without football for the first time.
"I was just going to focus on getting my degree and finishing school," he said.
Then he got a second opinion from a noted neurosurgeon, Dr. Kevin Foley. The Memphis-based specialist told Metcalf he could play football again _ but only after a surgery to repair his neck.
"He's done the surgery plenty of times," Metcalf said, "and he told me I was going to be fine."
He's more than fine now. He's fantastic.
And that's why Metcalf considers what's happened to him since to be "a miracle." And Foley a miracle worker.
