Avril’s future suddenly in doubt after neck injury

RENTON — Cliff Avril’s future if not career is suddenly in doubt.

It’s a cold reminder how suddenly NFL careers can end. Even for Pro Bowl players at the top of their games.

The neck and spine issues that caused the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive end to lose feeling in his arms and hands after he got kicked under the chin during Sunday night’s win against Indianapolis have Avril out of the Seahawks’ defense for Sunday’s game at the NFC West-leading Los Angeles Rams.

And indefinitely.

“Cliff’s not going to play this week,” coach Pete Carroll said Wednesday. “We are going to take some time to make sure that we are evaluating well, like we’ve talked about.

“We are going to hold him out.”

Carroll gave an ominous answer when asked if it appears Avril’s absence will be long-term.

“It could be. Could be, yeah,” Carroll said.

“We are going very slowly, making sure that he takes all the opportunity to talk to as many people as he wants to talk to, to make sure he knows what he’s got and what we need to do with it. We are just going to take care of him, and make sure that he’s well, and if he wants to come back, and we want to bring him back, we’ll let you know when we know.

“But right now we don’t.”

The part about “if he wants to come back …” stands out most.

Avril is 31. He’s made $25 million the past four seasons including this one. That’s from the four-year, $28.5 million extension he signed in 2014. His deal has one year and $7 million remaining on it after this season. None of that 2018 money is guaranteed.

Yet Avril has far more going for him than just football.

He and his wife Dantia have two young sons, Xavier and Xander. He and his Cliff Avril Family Foundation have held charity events such as backpack and school-supply giveaways to kids, to raise awareness for childhood diabetes. He has donated money for each of his 14 1/2 sacks over the past 21 games to build homes in impoverished Haiti.

Avril has visited the island nation to do some of the building. His father emigrated from Haiti in 1982, four years before Avril was born. Avril visited the Caribbean nation as a kid every summer to see his grandmother.

No, Avril is not about football above all else. That was evident in his reaction to being pulled out of Super Bowl 49 in February 2015, because of a concussion. He got that in the third quarter of a championship game he and teammate Michael Bennett were dominating.

In his foggy state that Super Bowl Sunday against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, Avril saw a bigger picture. He said he thought of his wife and family. Their second son, Xander, was born eight months after he got that concussion in the Super Bowl.

“Of course I wish I could have played out there. But my health is more important,” Avril said last November. “I think the docs did a great, a good job in that they felt I couldn’t go back out there …

“Yeah, they went through that whole protocol and felt like, yeah, I was out of it. So they made the right call.”

Avril did not protest to go back in?

“Nope,” he said. “That’s not something you want to play with.

“I mean, the game is changing, obviously, as far as this whole concussion thing. I feel like the more we get to know about how bad the situation may be in the long run, I feel like as a player, as a professional, as a person — as a father — you should do the right thing, even though you want to keep playing.

“If they feel like you can’t, you shouldn’t.”

Avril was asked in November if there was a time earlier in his nine-year NFL career when he would have played through something like that.

“Yeah,” he said without hesitation, “before I had kids.

“I’m serious. You start having kids, having a family, now you have to live for them, too. You’ve got to put that in perspective.”

He’s doing that again this week.

Avril played 11 snaps against the Colts before quarterback Jacoby Brissett kicked him under the chin and jolted his previously concussed head back while Avril pursued him in the first quarter. He did not return to the game.

Carroll said Avril feels OK walking around this week.

“I think he’s fine. He feels fine, from what he said the other day,” the coach said.

But Avril is just beginning talking to multiple doctors and “a lot of stuff,” Carroll said.

That process will take as long as it needs to.

And as long as it should.

Odhiambo full go

Rees Odhiambo practiced, and fully, on Wednesday.

Two days earlier, he was lying in a Seattle hospital bed, under the effects of morphine and getting tested to pinpoint the reason he was in pain just trying to breathe.

It turned out to be a bruised sternum. It was also one of the scariest scenes in the Seahawks’ locker room in recent years.

Odhiambo, Seattle’s 6-foot-4, 315-pound starting left tackle, was on his back on the floor of the locker room late Sunday night following the team’s win over Indianapolis. With Carroll, general manager John Schneider and teammates near him watching silently, paramedics from the Seattle Fire Department were all around him working to find a cause for his breathing problems. After about 15 minutes those paramedics wheeled him out on a stretcher to an ambulance and the hospital.

“It felt scary in the locker room when I couldn’t really breathe, at the time,” Odhiambo said before practice for Sunday’s game at the Rams — which improbably Odhiambo is on track to play.

“I don’t remember much or a lot of it,” he said, chuckling. “I started coming to in the ambulance. … I was kind of blacked out for a while.”

Carroll sounded as relieved as he was impressed.

“Rees got upgraded (Wednesday),” Carroll said. “He made a quick turn and it will be important to see how he handles wearing pads and all that (in practice) and see how he handles that.

“But a very favorable turn here. So we will see what happens.”

Odhiambo got elbowed in the chest from Colts linebacker Jabaal Sheard during the return of an interception by Indianapolis’ Malik Hooker with 6 minutes remaining in the third quarter. As Odhiambo played on, quarterback Russell Wilson noticed his tackle was having issues in the huddle between plays.

He played all the snaps in Seattle’s win over the Colts, 26 over the final 1 1/2 quarters with the bruised sternum.

Why? How?

“I got hit in the chest. It felt all right at the time, so I kept on playing,” he said. “Once the game was over and the fact the adrenaline wore off, and, man, the pain got a lot more.

“I went to the hospital, I think, just to make sure everything was all right, man.”

He said he didn’t see the hit from Sheard coming. Sheard was in front of Odhiambo when he swung back and got the Seahawk. Carroll said he was going to send tape of the play to the NFL to get an explanation whether it was legal.

“I thought my guy (he had been blocking earlier at the snap), being the only guy on that side was the only one I had to look out for,” Odhiambo said. “I thought I was all right, so I turned around and got ready to run — and got hit.

“I didn’t think too much of it. I’m just trying to get ready to go for this week.”

That, itself, is remarkable. And not just because the Rams have Aaron Donald, Robert Quinn, Michael Brockers and an attacking defensive front that has given the Seahawks problems for years.

“I’m going to try and go out there and play,” Odhiambo said, “yeah.”

Lane’s ‘long week’

Jeremy Lane has a strained groin and may not play against the Rams.

That would mean more of rookie third-round pick Shaquill Griffin at right cornerback and Justin Coleman inside at nickel back, as happened when Lane got hurt against the Colts. Coleman returned an interception for a touchdown against Indianapolis in his fourth game for Seattle since his trade from New England early last month.

“Jeremy Lane, it’s going to be a long week for him,” Carroll said. “We are going to see all the way through the end of the week, if he can make a comeback on this thing. But he won’t be able to practice for the next couple days.”

Extra point

Tight end Jimmy Graham, wide receiver Doug Baldwin, left guard Luke Joeckel, free safety Earl Thomas and cornerback Richard Sherman got what appeared to be veteran rest and maintenance days. All those starters have had those in recent mid-weeks, yet still played on Sunday.