A year ago, Issac Gross laid on an operating table in the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He stared at the ceiling as the anesthesia began to enter his body. A tear streamed down the side of his face, and he began to pray as he faded out of consciousness.
“I just prayed to God I would come back,” Gross said. “Please Lord, just bring me back. That was the toughest moment.”
A black “X” inked in sharpie at the lower-left portion of the front side of his neck signified where his mid-level disc fusion surgery would begin.
Just two weeks prior, Gross was suiting up for the Rebels’ home opener against Tennessee-Martin. It was his final season, or so he thought.
Defensive Tackle Issac Gross throw up the landshark after making a tackle against Florida State. (Photo by: Cameron Brooks)
Gross was in the game at defensive tackle and was hit with a chip block.
“They call it a bump combo and the guard came up under me and chipped me,” he recalled.
The blow jarred him and set in motion the climax of a nagging injury he had been dealing with more than a year. Gross had been battling the discomfort of a bulging disc in his back for nearly 12 months. He ached at times, felt stiff and occasionally had trouble sleeping, but played through it as the medical staff kept a close eye on him.
“Whenever I’d take a big shot or get up slow or run to the sideline Pat (Jernigan), the trainer would always ask me ‘Issac, do you feel any tingling feeling?’ and I’d say ‘no sir.’ I never knew what he meant by the tingling feeling,” Gross said.
This time, the answer was yes. The hit had thrust the disc into Gross’s spinal cord and punctured it.
“It touched it, and when it hit the spinal cord it shocked my nerves and I got this tingling feeling in my hand and I couldn’t move my hand,” Gross said. “Honestly, at that time it was really scary.”
He remembers not being able to make a fist or move his arms up and down.
He felt nothing but a tingling sensation as the disc jolted his nerves. Had the disc gone entirely through his spinal chord, Gross would have been paralyzed. How close was this to being a reality?
“Not even a half inch,” Gross said.
As he alerted Jernigan of what he was feeling, he knew his fate.
“I knew at that moment when I had that tingling feeling that I was going to be out for the rest of the year,” Gross said.
So here he was, two weeks later, lying down with the eerie sense of uneasiness that came with the realization that his neck was about to be cut open.
“The day of the surgery was the toughest when I had to realize that I had to have open surgery on my neck,” Gross said.
It was a similar procedure to what Peyton Manning had undergone in 2011. This gave Gross hope.
“I knew I could come back from it. I just laid down and said, ‘Bring me back.’ I wanted to come back and play football.”
He awoke to nearly instant results. Gross says he no longer felt stiff all the time and began to sleep better. But it came with limitations: he couldn’t face any sort of contact for six months. Gross was confined to the sidelines for the entire season.
It ate at him.
“Just knowing that I played one game and we have a big schedule this year and a great team and I couldn’t contribute to it,” Gross said. “All I could do was be there and encourage and support my brothers, but that was the hardest part just going out the very first game.”
He took matters into his own hands.
“The first day I went home, I immediately started doing pushups, pull ups and sit ups to get stronger like that until I could do neck exercises,” Gross said.
He worked tirelessly to get in shape. Gross says before the injury, he worked out once a day, five days per week. After? Six days a week, three times a day.
“It was just a process. How good do I want to be?,” Gross said. “It was getting myself in shape body-wise, muscle-wise, getting faster and stronger. Just whatever I had do.”
It taught him not to take anything lightly. He wanted to learn every facet of the game.
“When I was finally out of it, it made me want to learn football from a different aspect. It made me want to learn about the DBs, the safeties, the offensive line. It made me want to learn football as a whole. The whole strategy of the game,” Gross said.
“You take a lot of things for granted, but once you’re hurt and see life from a different angle and see your goals happening from a different angle, it makes you appreciate things.”
He remembers the feeling of sliding his helmet back on his head for the first time, signifying that he was back. He remembers running out of the tunnel in Camping World Stadium and returning to game action for the first time in a year. He remembers all of it.
“That was just my emotions coming out. When it was time for to get on that field, no matter what had happened no matter what was going on, it was just playing football,” Gross said. “I looked at it and knew I had other people that cared about me too. I wanted show out for my teammates, my family, the whole Rebel Nation, the state of Mississippi, everything. It was just the will to get there, to get back out there and ball.”
He had beaten it. What he prayed for in that operating room in Jackson had come to fruition. He says his desire to play is inspired by taking care of his family.
Gross suffered a scare, one that could have left him confined to a wheel chair, but he doesn’t live in fear. He doesn’t play in fear. He knows what can happen in the game of football. He’s fully aware of the danger, but his desire again outweighs that.
“I know the risk. I know what I signed up for. I know what I worked so hard for, and I know that I have so much passion and love for the game that you take risks,” Gross said. “When you want to take care of your family, you put yourself through so much as a man to make sure your family is okay.”
That’s not to say that he hasn’t learned from this. Gross lives in the moment now, not worrying what is to come or what has happened, because he’s seen how quickly the moment can escape him. The injury happened in a moment. His 2015 season was gone in a moment. Now, he’s determined to capture every one.
“Whatever position you’re in in life, take full advantage of it. Because any moment, any play and any down it can be taken from you,” Gross said. “That’s what it taught me. Take full advantage of every opportunity. Don’t worry about the outcome or what could happen. Just take advantage right now.”
