After Severe Football Injuries, the Anguished Teammates Left Behind Ken Dallafior, a former Detroit Lions offensive lineman, froze in front of his television Sept. 8 when he saw Tulane safety Devon Walker lying on the field after a collision with a teammate. Dallafior's vivid and haunting memories from Nov. 17, 1991, began to flood in. That was the day his teammate Mike Utley was paralyzed after shattering two vertebrae during a game against the Los Angeles Rams. Dallafior stood by his television and said a prayer for Walker, who had sustained a cervical spine fracture. He kept waiting, kept hoping Walker would stand up. Then he thought about the Tulane players who had to keep playing after seeing their teammate taken away in an ambulance. "I think, at that moment, you're really feeling helpless," Dallafior said of those players. It's very silent, very hollow, and you're tasked with pressing on and trying to regain your focus. But you're just sitting there, thinking about your teammate and your friend. To fans watching on television, football injuries can seem temporary. The replay is shown, the commentators debate which body part was affected and the commercial break begins, pulling a curtain over the damage. But injuries can be difficult for teammates to forget, especially when they must start blocking and tackling again moments later. Tulane Coach Curtis Johnson said he considered stopping the game after Walker was hurt. Former players who have witnessed severe injuries said they felt uneasy when resuming play, like driving home after a car accident. "Athletes have this gladiator effect where they play with reckless abandon and, really, injuries are the last thing on their minds," said Patrick Cohn, a sports psychologist based in Orlando, Fla. "However, when they see a teammate carted off with a major injury, it does bring to light all of a sudden, "Wait a second, I am vulnerable." " The indelible image from Utley's injury was when he raised his right thumb slightly while strapped onto a stretcher, a simple act of assuredness. Dallafior went to the hospital that night and was told he could not see Utley, so he slept on a couch in the lobby. A couple of days later, Dallafior said, medical workers went to the Lions" training facility looking for other big players who could essentially serve as molds for the casts the 6-foot-6, 288-pound Utley would need. Dallafior and offensive lineman Shawn Bouwens were taken to a hospital and fitted with body casts and halo device neck braces. For Dallafior, it was a chilling glimpse into a life he did not want to know. "It was extremely eerie," he said. And after we got done with that, they just put us in a van and took us back to practice. Psychologically, it was very trying. It made us question our own football mortality. 23, 2000, the freshman Penn State cornerback Adam Taliaferro leapt to tackle Ohio State running back Jerry Westbrooks by the legs. His helmet struck Westbrooks's knee and slammed into the turf. Taliaferro could not push himself up or feel his legs. Then he saw cornerback Bhawoh Jue standing over him. "I remember him saying, "Come on, man, get up," " Taliaferro said. I was saying I couldn't move, and I remember that look in his eyes that was pure fear. I guess he knew what was going on. I still remember that look on his face. Taliaferro was paralyzed from the neck down. He was treated on the field for about 30 minutes before being taken to a hospital in Columbus. His teammates, he said, were horrified. When Penn State's defensive coordinator, Tom Bradley, visited Taliaferro at the hospital a few days later, he said the Nittany Lions seemed tentative and listless at practice. Each Thursday night for the rest of that season, several players visited Taliaferro in a Philadelphia hospital. They were there to lift his spirits, but some of the freshmen were still rattled. "I remember them asking me if it was worth it to go out and play," Taliaferro said. They had second thoughts. Taliaferro, who regained full movement within a year, encouraged them to play as aggressively as always. But he understood their hesitancy.