Bud Clark refuses to break after devastating injury ends his rookie season in heartbreaking Hard Knocks scene
The Seahawks rookie was in obvious pain, but somehow found a way to joke, reassure everyone around him and share a touching moment with his young son
B ud Clark had every reason to fall apart. His rookie NFL season had essentially disappeared on one play, his right ankle was badly injured and he was being carted away from the field. Somehow, the Seattle Seahawks safety was still trying to make everyone else feel better.
New footage from Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Seattle Seahawks captured the painful moments after Clark suffered a fractured ankle against the Tennessee Titans.
As trainers surrounded him and the reality of the injury began to sink in, Clark refused to let the fear take over. "We gravy, we gravy," he repeated, trying to reassure those around him even as he admitted how badly it hurt.
Bud Clark's son gave him something to smile about
T hen came the moment that made everything feel much more human. Back inside the locker room , Clark called his fiancée and young son.
Instead of allowing the conversation to become completely consumed by what had just happened, the injured rookie joked with his little boy after he asked who had hurt his dad. Clark playfully asked if he was going to go after the person responsible, and his son confidently said yes.
And then, in the wonderfully innocent way only a child can, his son moved on to something far more important in his world : he wanted to know whether Dad was still going to fix his bike.
For a few seconds, football, injuries and an NFL career disappeared. Clark wasn't a Seahawks safety whose season had just been taken away. He was simply a father talking to his little boy.
Seattle has since placed Clark on injured reserve, officially ending the second-round pick's rookie season before the regular season even began.
It was a crushing ending to the first chapter of an NFL dream, but Hard Knocks captured something statistics never could. Clark's ankle may have broken, but in one of the hardest moments of his young career, he refused to let the rest of him break with it.
