O.J. Brigance remembers the 2001 Super Bowl like it was yesterday, when he charged down the field for the Ravens and collided with a kick returner for the first tackle of the game.
Now, everyday activities like eating are as challenging as his old workouts. Picking up a fork these days feels like lifting more than a hundred pounds of weights.
Brigance, 38, was diagnosed in May 2007 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, a progressive and fatal disease that shuts down nerve cells responsible for movement.
The body that allowed Brigance to compete at football's highest level is betraying him.
Brigance needs to be driven to work because he can't lift his arms. He needs to sit on the bed to put on his pants because he loses his balance. And he needs his wife to button his shirt because he doesn't have the same dexterity with his hands.
"I can see where you can fold up the tent," said Brigance, the Ravens' director of player development. "To be totally honest, I'm not always upbeat. It's tough. But I've always believed that we're able to overcome more than what we think."
Brigance will be honored tomorrow at the Ed Block Courage Awards, receiving the Johnny Unitas Tops in Courage Award for battling the disease with the same willpower he used to fight his way into the NFL. In 1996, he was rejected by 28 of 30 NFL teams when he called for a tryout, but ultimately had a seven-year career.
About 5,600 people in the United States are diagnosed with ALS each year, a disease that generally paralyzes muscles and the lungs, often causing suffocation, but doesn't impair the brain or any of the senses. There is no known cure, and most die within five years of being diagnosed.
Brigance could have chosen to walk away from his job and handle his ordeal privately. A former special teams standout who prided himself on outworking current Ravens in the weight room, Brigance knows he is a shadow of the overachieving player who played on winning teams in the 2001 Super Bowl and the Canadian Football League's 1995 Grey Cup in Baltimore.
His rippled muscles have disintegrated and his arms sag to the side of his body. His fingers can no longer wrap around a football, much less give a firm handshake.
But Brigance has dedicated himself to be a guiding hand to the Ravens' players, preaching to them that adversity makes you stronger.
