Ten Years After His Spinal Injury, Eric LeGrand Still Strong

A decade after his spinal injury at MetLife Stadium, Eric LeGrand remains strongly committed to his future.

He laid motionless on the 25-yard line, a seemingly routine collision in a college football game sending Eric LeGrand onto his back. That would be the last moment where LeGrand would run and stand upright on his own.

And yet, a decade after the hit that left him paralyzed, LeGrand is standing taller than he ever has. He has no regrets about the play that changed his life - the moment that left him with a spinal cord injury and now in a wheelchair. He vows to walk again, he says, now just days before the tenth anniversary of the tragic injury.

“I think about it every day,” LeGrand said in a phone conversation this week.

“Where would my life be right now? What would I be doing? Would be in the NFL? Would I be retired? What entrepreneurial endeavors would I be embarking? Would I have my own gym? So many time, you ask what is. Then you see what actually is, and it’s not so bad. But I do think about it daily.”

Life now for LeGrand is hectic and busy. He’s still the kid from Colonia, N.J. who was a three-star recruit, was among the earliest commitments to Greg Schiano’s recruiting class for 2008. A defensive lineman, LeGrand more than any other recruit that year bought into the program’s upward trajectory. He embodied the spirit of Rutgers, a program on the ascend at that time.

He tackles life from his wheelchair the same way he made plays a defensive lineman for Rutgers. He’s a motivational speaker who has travelled the country to speak before large corporations right down to local community events in the basement of a church. He's even spoken to the New York Jets on several occasions. 

And LeGrand is currently flexing his business muscles as well with several investments and new opportunities.

He reads voraciously, having just finished a biography on Nike founder Phil Knight.

And of course he’s still present at Rutgers Stadium where his No. 52 hangs above the second deck, retired and cherished by the scarlet faithful. On gameday, LeGrand is the third man in the booth for Rutgers football broadcasts, his ever-present smile as loud to listeners as his upbeat charm.

All that seemed distant 10 years ago on October 16, 2010.

***

It was the sixth game of the college football season for Rutgers. It was a typical fall Saturday, blustery and an overcast grey that hung over MetLife Stadium. Rutgers was hosting Army and had just tied the game in the fourth quarter in what was a surprisingly competitive game. 

On the ensuing kickoff, LeGrand raced down the field on special teams duty when he collided trying to make a tackle. An awkward fall, his head hitting the turf with a thud, saw LeGrand motionless on the field. His legs were straight and stayed inches off the field for several moments.

Medical staff rushed to his side. The game stopped.

Usually, LeGrand would pup-up after such a hit. In many ways he was a spiritual voice for Rutgers football, a player who would visibly run up and down the sidelines encouraging his teammates. He was a prominent part of the defensive rotation as a tackle but his athleticism made him an asset on kickoff duty.

None of that mattered now as this physical specimen, so strong and powerful and quick moments before, was reduced to a sense of pure fear as he laid on the turf.

He wanted to get up. He couldn’t.

Breathe, he thought. Breathe.

Breathe.

Get up, get up. Breathe. Breathe.

“I can’t move, I have a full body stinger. I can’t breathe. Breathe,” LeGrand said.

“Am I going to die right now? I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Alright, alright. Let’s try to get up. Try to breathe. Lord, take me at ease. I can’t breathe.”

***

In the past 10 years, LeGrand has done plenty. He’s graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, embarked on a media career and has become a national face for spinal injuries. He even won an ESPY.

Within New Jersey, he’s become a legend. If LeGrand rolls into a room, all eyes turn to him. Everyone knows him.

He is, in the state that birthed Bruce Springsteen, the boss.

And he remains undaunted in his desire to walk again. He remains amazingly committed to his rehabilitation process, even during the recently tumultuous few months.

Due to COVID-19, LeGrand doesn’t go to Kessler for his rehabilitation. He admits he’s blessed to have therapy equipment at home. So two or three times a week, he does a home rehab with the help of his mother and a nurse.

He's seeing some progress with some feeling throughout his body. His goal is to be as strong as possibly for when a cure comes along, he says.

He remains active in the fight for a cure for paralysis.

In 2013, he launched Team LeGrand, a fundraising arm of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. To date, Team LeGrand has raised nearly $2 million to advance innovative research and to improve the quality of life for individuals and families impacted by paralysis. This year LeGrand inspired a passionate network of supporters across the country that even the 2020 pandemic couldn’t stop: though the tenth annual “A Walk to Believe 5K” had to shift from in-person to virtual, participants from all 50 states and as far as Australia and Ireland raised a record-breaking $189,000.

Poignantly, this weekend he is raising funds with Team LeGrand through the Reeve Run & Roll.

***

A decade ago, LeGrand was worried about the little things in life that, days earlier, seemed so automatic for him as a Division I athlete. Breathing letting alone communicating was strained and exhausting.

A cure and walking again, was simply not on his mind.

He rewinds to just a few weeks after the injury. He was transferred to St. Barnabas Hospital with a fever and a temperature of 105 degrees.

“I remember getting tossed and turned by this one nurse who was trying to move me in my bed. The ventilator kept popping out and I couldn’t breathe,” LeGrand said, his voice lowering from its usual timbre.

“That was my lowest moment. I can’t breathe. I’m getting tossed and turned in this bed. I fainted three times in one day. That was in the first month of my injury. That was the lowest point, the lowest point I’ve ever been.”

During that time, he remembers the presence of one man who was there, despite obvious physical and emotional fatigue.

One of the first people to rush onto the field at MetLife Stadium was Schiano, the Rutgers head coach who had turned a laughingstock program into one of the best teams in the rebuilt Big East. One of the main reasons LeGrand had turned down scholarship offers from the likes of Maryland and Virginia among other programs was because of this man.

Schiano knelt beside LeGrand, visibly worried as his player was strapped to a gurney and lifted off the field.

In the days and weeks after the injury, Schiano was present at his player’s bedside at the hospital. Work for a college football head coach in season routinely goes to midnight, and the Rutgers head coach, a noted workaholic with perfectionist tendencies, is no different.

Despite the drain of the college football season, after work, Schiano would head to the hospital and sit next to LeGrand for several hours. Often, he would be there when LeGrand fell asleep and would be there at dawn when his family returned.

Schiano’s presence, LeGrand remembers, was from a desire to give his mother a break for a few hours. Let her sleep a bit and shower.

Rutgers would finish the season 4-8, missing a bowl game for the first time since 2005. They beat Army that day in overtime.

They wouldn’t win again that season.

***

Life now is very different for LeGrand then what he feared a decade ago. The unknown was scary, he admits, but he believes all this has happened for a reason.

There are absolutely no regrets. No anger towards anyone. No desire to change the decisions and choices he made in the past.

The injury gripped the nation and made the Rutgers defensive lineman a household name. In many ways, the opportunities afforded to him from a horrific injury would never have happened any other way.

He’s become an inspiration, an ambassador of hope and determination in the face of adversity.

Currently, LeGrad has several projects including partnering with Forbeto, an app where users listen to ads a few times a month and then get money credited to their account. This money then can be donated to partner charities.

It is an intriguing concept. Local businesses get exposure and charities benefit. LeGrand said that it is win-win during the pandemic as local businesses are suffering and charities have seen giving decline.

He also is excited about starting a coffee shop in Woodbridge, N.J. next summer. He jokes that he never tried coffee until this past year and was instantly hooked.

“What was I thinking?” “LeGrand said with a laugh. “What took me so long?”

At the aptly named LeGrand Coffee, he is promising a traditional coffee house vibe that will also have cubicles for people to be able to work remotely.

“It was definitely not on my mind 10 years ago. I had to make it day-by-day … to get a degree. How to make it to get a normal life, to get to therapy sessions,” LeGrand said. “Just life in general. Here I am now, I’ve adapted. I am trying to walk again one day and also working on myself and share my attitude, the knowledge I’ve picked up these past 10 years of how to live life in this world chair.”