Sometimes the most interesting stories in sports are about players who are on the fringe of the roster, who have had to fight incredible battles just to get there, and whose future is most unclear. That is the case with Eagles running back Henry Josey who blew up his knee while playing for Missouri in 2011 and went undrafted in the 2014 NFL Draft.
Eagles beat writer Les Bowen caught up with Josey at the NovaCare Complex and discussed the remarkable journey he's made from returning from one of the most gruesome knee injuries in sports. Josey's knee basically exploded.
The ESPN segment above explains all the different pieces of the knee that were destroyed. Seemingly all of them.
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There is some powerful stuff. Not just about a kid hoping to play football again but about a kid who just wants to feel like himself once again. He would put in 14 to 16 hour days at rehab, according to Bowen. It wasn't fun.
"Waking up every day, knowing that you're going to be in pain that day," Josey said, when asked what was hardest. "And that you're going to go through something that's possibly going to make you cry or make you want to give up. The can make you hate people . . . you can see the expression on their face, like, 'My gosh, we're putting him through this, but we have to do it.' I'd eat breakfast there, I'd eat lunch there, I'd even take a nap there during the day. They'd take me back and forth to my classes . . .
"I had a lot of time to think about my life in general, how I wanted to look at things," Josey recalled.
Obviously the diminutive (5-8, 194) undrafted guy is going to have his hands full making the Birds' roster, but he's certainly a guy Eagles fans can pull for.