Ever since he got crunched and was lying unconscious on the field in Texas six months ago, Ricardo Lockette’s career has been in serious doubt.
Now it is over.
The News Tribune confirmed Wednesday the press conference the Seahawks called for Lockette on Thursday afternoon at team headquarters is to announce Seattle’s 29-year-old former wide receiver and special-teams ace is retiring.
Lockette posted sentimental pictures and thoughts on social media Wednesday.
“I just wanted to make my teammates, family, &The 12th Man proud!!!! #weallwegot,” Lockette wrote on Twitter and Instagram.
Lockette has been in a neck brace — and thankful to be alive — for much of the time since he got flattened by a hit from Dallas safety Jeff Heath during a punt in the Seahawks’ win at the Cowboys Nov. 1. The blow high to the chest, which officials penalized as a “blindside hit,” immediately crumpled Lockette.
He later said he initially feared for his life while he was laying first unconscious then motionless on the field for many minutes with a concussion. Paramedics then strapped him to a spine board with his helmet still on while the giant AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, was in dreaded silence.
Lockette talked this offseason with Redmond fire fighters and emergency medical personnel. He told them doctors at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas said to him the ligaments and cartilage that help connect his neck vertebrae were so damaged by Heath’s hit that if he had stood up, been pulled by a teammate or handled incorrectly by trainers “I would have died.”
He had surgery at Baylor Medical Center to stabilize his neck and repair the ligaments and cartilage. Upon his discharge from the hospital in Dallas later that week Lockette was an occasional visitor to the Seahawks’ locker room in Renton. When last season ended for Seattle in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs in mid-January, Lockette’s contract expired. He became a free agent and remained unsigned through Wednesday’s news.
Truthfully, he’s thankful to be walking. Playing football has been a secondary concern for him.
Thursday, his playing career will officially go into the past tense. Considering all the former community-college track athlete and undrafted, Division-II free agent has gone through, that’s indeed for the best.
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