It's been over seven years since Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier took a head-on collision on "Monday Night Football" that would change his life trajectory.
Shazier was left a paraplegic and would undergo spinal fusion surgery.
He rehabbed back to being able to walk again.
In the years that followed, he distanced himself from football after accepting the reality that his career had inevitably concluded, he remained on the Steelers' physically unable to perform list before officially announcing his retirement in 2020.
Now, he makes his return to the game, embarking on a new career path in coaching for the same organization that drafted him in the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft one decade ago.
As an offensive assistant, Shazier is miraculously back to taking hits in practice as he prepares running backs who bounce off of him in drills.
"Honestly, I didn't know [about coaching] because I was so focused on playing," Shazier told ESPN's Brooke Pryor. "I thought it was a blessing to play, and I just wanted to play as long as I could. I was going to let that happen down the road, but it wasn't my first choice."
In the few years leading up to his decision to return to football as a coach, Shazier completed his degree at Ohio State, where he was a First-team All-American. He dabbled in other ventures, too, such as podcasting, launching a medical marijuana bran,d and working to build his foundation, the Ryan Shazier Fund for Rehabilitation.
Though throughout all of these exploits, Shazier realized that they weren't the paths where he was meant to be headed.
"I just tried out different things, and I ended up finding out the grass isn't always greener on the other side."
Shazier still found himself yearning for his life in football again. He discovered that the breach in his relationship with it was over and it was time to reunite with the game.
"To lose the game in a way I never envisioned has not been easy," Shazier said. "When you play the game of football the way I did, you convince yourself you're Superman, that nothing can stop you. But then the moment I got hurt, I stopped being Superman. That was difficult to make sense.
"Some people fall in love with people [and] you get mad at them. But you know, you always make up -- and that's how I feel about the game of football."
Once he made this decision, he reconnected with Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, who offered him a coaching role for the 2024 season to train the running backs after succeeding through a tryout during OTAs and minicamps.
In full circle, Shazier started his coaching career in the same place his NFL playing tenure began: at a training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
"He has a passion for [football], he has a thirst for knowledge regarding the game that he loves to share with others," Tomlin told NFL coaching legend Tony Dungy in an interview this season. "He did that as a player. He has all the tools to be a really good coach, man, and I'm just excited to be a part of that component of his continued relationship with the game."
