No matter where you live in the United States, you'd be hard pressed to have missed footage of Ryan Shazier over the past eight months. And that's outside of Pittsburgh.
Inside the region, there have been constant reminders of Shazier's injury, including the initial reactions to and footage of Shazier's public recovery process. It's not only had an emotionally uplifting effect on Shazier, his teammates and the Steelers as a whole, it's been a topic of discussion all over the area.
Young football players saw what happened to the Pro Bowl linebacker. They saw him carried from the field on a backboard last Dec. 4 in Cincinnati. They heard the words every football player buries in the back of their mind when they put on a helmet and pads. Spinal cord injury. Paralyzed.
As we've seen, Shazier has continued to recover from his injury. He's walking with the use of a cane, with a stated goal of returning to the NFL.
"My dream is to come back and play football again," he said last month in his first press conference since the injury. "I have been working my tail off every single day. I have that in the back of my mind every single time I go to rehab. I just try to stay positive every single day. I am just trying to do everything I can to get back."
But he also can serve as a cautionary tale to those young football players who saw what happened and have viewed the aftermath. Football can be a dangerous game if you don't tackle correctly.
"Some of our varsity players came in and we talked about it the week after it happened," said Burgettstown High School coach Mark Druga. "They obviously had questions about it. But I told them that's why you have to keep your heads up and see what you're tackling.
"It was definitely a wake-up call."
That's not a shot at Shazier. He was/is a generational-type player, one capable of filling the hole against running backs or chasing down wide receivers thanks to his 4.4-second speed in the 40-yard dash.
But he also was a player who threw his body around recklessly, as all NFL players do. And, he often would drop his head at the point of contact. That's what happened on his tackle of Cincinnati receiver Josh Malone.
"Look, he's a great football player and he played the game the way he knew how," said Canon-McMillan head coach Mike Evans. "People look at that and say, 'Why didn't the Steelers teach him to tackle differently?' But he played at Ohio State. Are you telling me they didn't have coaches at Ohio State that told him that wasn't the proper way to tackle? Everyone teaches technique, but when you're trying to get a big man on the ground -- and if I remember correctly, the guy he was tackling was a bigger guy -- sometimes that technique goes out the window."
Evans is speaking from experience. A former offensive lineman at the University of Akron and Mercyhurst University, he had tryouts with the Steelers and New Orleans Saints in the '90s, spending time in the camps. He also coached at the collegiate level at Saginaw State and California University of Pennsylvania, where he he helped several players move on to the NFL.
He's been around the game as long as he can remember. And he's a strong proponent of football.
"Football gets a bad deal, in my opinion," Evans said. "There are higher concussion rates in soccer and hockey than there are in football. ... If I thought for a minute that I was putting kids at risk needlessly for long-term injury, I'd walk away from the game. I would. But we're doing so much to make the game safer. Are there still inherent risks? Sure. But they are there for every sport."
Evans also is old enough, however, to have heard of Darryl Stingley, who was paralyzed from a hit by Oakland's Jack Tatum in a 1978 preseason game while playing for the Patriots. But, as he noted, that happened so long ago, many people either forgot or hadn't heard of it. Shazier's injury, which happened in a nationally televised game, brought spinal cord injuries in football -- however uncommon -- back to the forefront.
But, like Mike Tomlin, who has repeatedly championed the game, Evans feels strongly enough about it that he doesn't dissuade his own 12-year-old son from playing the sport, though he does believe younger players should play flag football at least until they reach middle school age.
Druga pointed to the "Heads Up Football" program championed by Tomlin and the Steelers as something that's helping change the game.
"I went to the program a couple of years ago at Heinz Field and Coach Tomlin spoke," Druga recalled. "What he basically said is that we're the gatekeepers for the game and we have to make sure these kids learn the proper tackling techniques. I couldn't agree more."
Druga has been involved with the game all of his life, as well, playing collegiately at Washington & Jefferson College and also serving as an assistant coach at West Allegheny before returning to his alma mater as head coach. And like many coaches, he's also involved with the youth program at Burgettstown, which serves as the feeder system for the high school program.
Druga said every coach in his program, from the high school level on down, teaches tackling fundamentals the same way because he insists on it.
"We have changed how we tackle," Druga said. "It's part of the evolution of the game. All the coaches in my program know that if the players put their head down while making a tackle, they are going to be disciplined. We don't do a lot of physical punishment any more, but that is one of the things that will mean immediate discipline, whether it be extra running or whatever. We will punish the athlete immediately if they put their head down. At the start of camp each year, we go over tackling and proper technique."
But not everyone does, according to Druga.
"You can tell the programs that haven't caught up with the times," he said. "You'll see several kids who go in with their heads down and you can tell."
As Evans said, however, players can be taught the proper tackling technique, but it can go out the window at game speed. Part of the problem is that so few teams actually practice live tackling.
At the high school level, that can be because of numbers issues. At the NFL level, it's because the NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement prohibits live tackling at many practice sessions, and even when teams can go live, they balk at it, hoping to avoid putting players in jeopardy.
"It's a fine line to walk," said Evans. "We tackled live when I first got (to Canon-McMillan) and then we got away from it the past couple of years. But I think we're going to do more live tackling this year. The only way you can learn to do it correctly is to do it. You can go over it and have drills, but you have to do it live."
Evans can take that risk a little more easily than coaches at smaller schools such as Druga. Canon-McMillan is a Class 6-A school, Pennsylvania's largest classification. Burgettstown plays in Class AA, the second-smallest classification. And the Blue Devils don't have some of the major issues with a lack of players that occur at many smaller schools; they typically have half as many players in the program as the Big Macs.
And worries of the long-term effects of concussions, the introduction of other sports and the lack of as many kids willing to put in the work it takes to play football have hurt the game's overall numbers.
According to a 2017 report by the National Federation of State High School Associations, participation in football dropped by nearly 26,000 athletes last year, continuing a recent trend. That makes it tougher and tougher for smaller schools to practice live tackling. It also means they have to be smarter about how they tackle.
"We use shields and work on pursuit angles," Druga said. "Now, it's no longer getting your head in front of the tackle. Now, it's behind the tackle."
No coach wants to be in that situation where they have a player carted off the field with a neck injury, though no matter how many precautions are taken, injuries still happen.
"We were at Charleroi last year and our safety was life-flighted with a neck injury," Druga said. "He was OK, thank goodness, but it was scary. You never want that."
There are inherent risks in playing any sport. For example, according to American Sports Data, Inc., there were 9.5 injuries per 100 participants in sports in general. Football topped that list at 18.8 per 100 participants, with hockey second at 15.9.
But there's a difference between a strained ligament and a traumatic neck or spinal cord injury. And that's what everyone wants to avoid. Kids are still going to want to play the game. Heck, as he said, Shazier still wants to play the game.
"I played this game since I was 4 years old. I have loved this game since I was 4 years old," he said. "Just because I got hurt doesn’t mean I am going to stop loving the game of football. I feel when you give your best in anything that you do, it makes it easier when something happens to you because you never have to look back and regret that you didn’t go hard enough. I gave it everything I have. I got hurt. And I am still going to give it everything I have to come back."
That has been Evans' biggest takeaway from the whole thing.
He sees a player who, despite suffering a devastating injury, wants to return to play again.
"He's been doing it all his life," Evans said. "He has been able to provide his family with life-changing money. And the Steelers have shown how classy they are with the way they have stuck by him and continued to work with him. Who are we to say he shouldn't come back?"