SI

Michael Bennett suffers frightening injury in Seahawks-Texans game

Sometimes, football is a scary game. (Patric Schneider/AP) The Seattle Seahawks were outscored 17-3 and outgained 324-88 in the first half against the Houston
Doug Farrar|
Michael Bennett suffers frightening injury in Seahawks-Texans game
Michael Bennett suffers frightening injury in Seahawks-Texans game

Sometimes, football is a scary game. (Patric Schneider/AP)

The Seattle Seahawks were outscored 17-3 and outgained 324-88 in the first half against the Houston Texans at Houston's Reliant Stadium, but near the end of the first half, defensive end Michael Bennett suffered a scary injury that rendered those stats relatively meaningless. With 18 seconds left in the second quarter, Bennett came around the right end to pressure Texans quarterback Matt Schaub, and Houston left tackle Ryan Harris pushed Bennett into Schaub's lower body. It wasn't a dirty play by any means, but the terrible luck of the draw had Bennett's head snapping violently as he hit Schaub. (GIF via SBNation.)

Bennett laid face-down on the turf for several minutes before he was taken off on a stretcher. He raised his head and exhibited movement in his upper and lower body. Fox Sports reported during the third quarter of the game that Bennett has all movement and all feeling in his extremities, and it's being termed a "lower-body injury." Seattle head coach Pete Carroll said after his team's 23-20 overtime win that Bennett suffered a strained lower back muscle, and he was able to return to the team after a trip to the hospital.

Most poignantly, Bennett's father was in the stands, yelling for his son to respond to him. Bennett attended Texas A&M and planned to have several friends and members of his family at the game.

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Doug Farrar
DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009,  Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine.  He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.

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