Terrible neck injury forces Seahawks WR Ricardo Lockette to retire

When Seattle Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette fell to the turf in Dallas and didn't move last season, and when he stayed down for a long time afterward, you knew he had just suffered a serious injury.

As it turns out, the hit ended Lockette's career.

Lockette, who will turn 30 on May 21, will announce his retirement on Wednesday, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport said. It's a tough blow for Lockette, who worked himself onto the Seahawks' roster as an undrafted free agent, only to have his career end on one of the most devastating hits in recent NFL history.


The hit from Dallas Cowboys safety Jeff Heath while Lockette covered a punt was so bad, Lockette said earlier this year he could have died.

"The doctor told me that pretty much my skull, all the muscles, all the ligaments that connect my vertebrae and the cartilage between that -- so the cartilage is out, the ligaments torn. He said if I would have stood up then, the weight of my head, left, right, front, back, I would have died," Lockette said in March, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The injury still lingers, according to an ESPN report:

According to #Seahawks sources, WR Riccardo Lockette is unable to rotate his head following neck injury and no choice but to retire
— Ed Werder (@Edwerderespn) May 12, 2016
Lockette, in a video, repeatedly thanked the emergency personnel on hand for "perfectly" managing the situation to keep him alive. He repeated that had things gone just a little differently he could have died on the field.

"If one of my teammates would have come over and pulled my arm, I would have died," he said, via the Post-Intelligencer. "Just barely. If the returner at the time would have broke a couple tackles and they would have moved and fell on me, I would have died on that field."


Lockette had surgery right after the hit, but he could never get back on the field. He finishes his five-year career, with a short San Francisco 49ers stint in between two Seahawks stints, with 22 catches for 451 yards. He won a Super Bowl ring with the Seahawks at the end of the 2013 season. He was also involved in one of the most famous plays ever, Malcolm Butler's interception at the end of Super Bowl XLIX. Lockette was the intended receiver on the play.

Lockette took the hard road, battling up through being on practice squads and getting cut multiple times to eventually stick with the Seahawks and become a champion. It's too bad his career had to end on such a brutal hit. At least the result of that hit wasn't worse.