Josh Ford’s arm injury could have ended his day against Mississippi State. Instead, it turned into one of those hard-nosed Alabama football stories that teammates don’t forget.
The Crimson Tide tight end broke his arm in the first half of the win over Mississippi State, then went right back out and finished the game after halftime. The next day he had surgery, and by the following Wednesday he was already back at practice.
He played again Saturday against Georgia, and he’ll be out there again this Saturday at No. 14 Tennessee.
The injury happened on a down block, when Ford’s left arm got trapped between Alabama offensive lineman William Sanders and a Mississippi State defender. That impact snapped his radius in half.
At halftime, after the X-ray, the arm was hard-casted and Ford returned to the field. Dr.
Christopher Garrett handled the surgery that Sunday, Oct. 4 to repair the fracture.
“I had surgery six days before the game, and I mean, I truly believe the Lord was in that operating room with them,” Ford said. “I had 85 percent of my grip strength back after six days and really good mobility.
I was already practicing on Wednesday. Super thankful for everyone in there, Jeff Allen… just everybody getting me back.
It’s still recovering, but I couldn’t do it without them. That’s for sure.
Saturday, it was my decision to play, they were’t forcing me out there. I felt good to go.”
Ford wasn’t just talking a big game, either. He was doing pushups in the training room the day after surgery to show the coaches he was ready. Against Georgia, he didn’t catch a pass, but he still logged more than 20 snaps.
Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb said none of that shocked anyone inside the program.
“He's amazing,” Grubb said of Ford. “To be honest, probably even more so because we knew he was gonna play.
I don't know that we knew he was going to play that many snaps. Danny Lewis went down, had to come out of the game for a little bit early in the game.
So he came back later, but that put a little bit more onus on Josh, but I don't, the crazy thing is, I don't think anybody on the team wearing the Crimson was surprised at all that, you know, Josh was out there just rolling like a normal day at work.
“So he loves football. He's tough as nails.
He loves his team and he really embodies what this team's about. So we're going to lean on him.
We need him this week. He's a guy that's going to be able to bounce us back and get us going again.”
Ford said he wanted to get back on the field quickly because he sees himself as a leader, especially with Alabama trying to regroup after its first loss of the season to Georgia. The Tide now heads to Tennessee for a rivalry game and is likely doing so without key offensive players Ryan Coleman-Williams and Racin Delgatty.
“Everybody's fired up,” Ford said. “But we're leaving last week behind us.
We don't want to get beat twice by the same team, that's kinda what we've been saying. Try and move on and really focus on there's a lot of the season left.
We're really excited about it.”
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