Tag: Project 11

Dwayne Haskins says that Alex Smith has been a huge help in his career

Dwayne Haskins has been able to lean on Alex Smith a lot to help mentor him in the first year of his NFL career.

One of the many reasons that Kansas City Cheifs QB Patrick Mahomes has found such great success in his young career is because he had a great mentor alongside him during his first years in the NFL.

That same mentor is now standing alongside Washington Redskins QB Dwayne Haskins, and he will hopefully be able to have a similar effect.

Despite dealing with the enormous challenge of trying to rehab his leg and return to the field — a journey which was documented by ESPN on Friday night in ‘Project 11’ — Alex Smith has been able to act as a solid mentor for Haskins during his first year in the league. According to Haskins, Smith has been a huge asset to him so far.

Whether it’s coaching him up after practice or a game, or helping him with drills or playbook studying, Smith has been a consummate professional in Washington, and the team is better for it.

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Details of the flesh-eating bacteria that plagued Alex Smith’s leg are haunting

ESPN is set to air ‘Project 11’ on Friday night; a documentary detailing Alex Smith’s miraculous recovery from a gruesome leg injury.

At this point in time, Washington Redskins quarterback Alex Smith is eyeing a return to the NFL, hoping that he can play football at some point again in his career.

A little over a year ago, that was an impossible thought to have. Keeping him alive was the main goal.

“Our first priority is we’re going to save his life. And then we’re going to do our best to save his leg,” a doctor said of Smith during his recovery, via ESPN.com. “And anything beyond that is a miracle.”

Considering that Smith is currently rehabbing and working to get back into good enough shape to be able to take the field again, it’s safe to say that a miracle has happened.

ESPN is set to air a documentary on Friday night, titled ‘Project 11.’ It will detail Smith’s recovery from a compound fracture in his leg that was suffered in a 2018 Week 11 game against the Houston Texans. After being carted off the field and rushed to the hospital, Smith floated in and out of consciousness as doctors tried to figure out what was wrong. The story from ESPN details his recovery, and this excerpt from his wife, Elizabeth Barry, is haunting.

They’re thinking he has a blood clot, a pulmonary embolism. Then we’re doing a cardiogram. Throughout the night, it’s test after test after test. Alex’s fever is through the roof. His blood pressure is dropping.

Everyone — the nurses, the doctors — every person is in this room and can hear me asking, “Is everything going to be OK?” They are saying, “We just need to find the root of the problem.”

Finally, we learn he has an infection.

The doctors are telling me, “He’s septic. It’s in his blood. But we don’t know what type of infection it is.”

Dr. Steve Malekzadeh, one of Alex’s trauma surgeons, comes in early the next morning. It’s Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. He would tell us later he came in because he couldn’t sleep. He knew something was off. He unwraps the bandages from Alex’s leg, even though it had been unwrapped just a few hours before. At that time, it looked normal, at least as normal as post-surgical fracture sites look.

But now his leg is black. The blisters are huge. It’s clear the infection is in his leg. It’s something I couldn’t fathom seeing in a war movie, only now it’s my husband. It’s my worst nightmare.

The rest of the story will be air on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. ET, detailing his recovery, and a potential return to football that lays ahead of him. It will be gruesome at times, and may illicit some teams for any fan who remembers that fateful day in November, but it will undoubtedly be uplifting to watch as Smith fights back and works to continue his athletic career. It may never come to fruition that he plays in the NFL again, but at this point, he’s alive and well, and everything else is just gravy.

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PREVIEW: Video of ESPN’s ‘Project 11’ E60 documenting Alex Smith recovery

Alex Smith’s arduous return from a gruesome leg injury was documented by ESPN Films and set to be released Friday night.

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“I think I’m so used to my body responding how I want it to respond, I had high expectations for this process and thought that I could, you know, knock it out of the park,” Washington Redskins quarterback Alex Smith said in the E60 Project 11 documentary. “I think I’ve had to slow that, a little bit.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find an athlete in the NFL who hasn’t dealt with injuries before, tasked with the difficult process of rehabbing and trying to come back stronger. This is not that, for Alex Smith.

ESPN has been teasing an upcoming E60 presentation that is set to air on Friday night, documenting Smith and his journey through the recovery of a horrific leg injury that has put his football career, and at times his life, into jeopardy. ESPN sent Redskins Wire a preview clip of the documentary, which can be seen above.

The program debuts on Friday, May 1, at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

“No NFL player has ever been through what Alex Smith has,” said Andy Tennant, E60 executive producer. “He’s normally a very private person but he wanted to document his road to recovery as well and as detailed as possible, with the hope that future players could use it as a road map. The access that he and his family granted to E60 is incredible and viewers will see a story of strength, dedication, and perseverance.”

Get your popcorn ready for Friday night.

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