Raiders’ Neiron Ball has Already Overcome Insurmountable Odds
With the 161st pick in the NFL Draft, the Oakland Raiders selected Neiron Ball, an outside linebacker from Florida. The pick wasn’t the most highly regarded, but after everything he’s gone through, finding a role on an NFL team seems like child’s play.
Ball stands 6’2″, and tips the scales around 235 pounds. In his college career, he totaled 5.5 tackles for loss, three sacks, an interception, and three pass deflections.
He has NFL size, and is versatile. He played outside linebacker in both 3-4 and 4-3 schemes, and has played inside linebacker as well. Ball possess good speed, and the non-stop motor that coaches love.
The numbers are not all that impressive, and they won’t make your eyes pop. But his story is incredible. He underwent knee surgery last November. Microfracture surgery to be exact, the same procedure that Jadeveon Clowney underwent during the 2014 season. But after everything that Ball went through before that, that surgery seems almost trivial.
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The term “lucky to be alive” is used quite a lot, and when it’s used, it doesn’t always mean exactly what it says. However, when you say Ball is lucky to be alive, you mean it.
Ball lost both parents when he was a child. His mother, Johanna, died when he was six, on Mother’s Day in 1998, from a heart attack.
A few years later, his father, Ronnie, was diagnosed with lung cancer, and underwent surgery on his throat. The nine-year-old Ball had to help his father eat through a tube, and one night during this ritual, Ronnie suffered a seizure, and passed away later that night. He watched his father die.
Ball stuck with football, and eventually became a Florida Gator. He played all 13 games in 2010, his freshman year, in his familiar linebacker spot. But after his inaugural college campaign, he experienced something that nearly cost him his own life.
In a February practice in 2011, Ball was forced to leave practice with a migraine that caused him horrible pain. When the aching persisted, he found himself in the hospital, and had to sit in a dark room, because the pain was just too much to handle.
It turned out that Ball had bleeding in his brain. The diagnosis came back as Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM), which is defined as “a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain.” In other words, the blood vessels in the brain get tangled up, and eventually rupture, causing bleeding.
AVM is a congenital condition, meaning if a person has it, they were born with it. Less than one percent of the population, one in approximately 200-500 people, have the condition. Once the brain starts to bleed for the first time, 10 to 15 percent of people don’t survive. If another hemorrhage were to occur, that percentage vastly increases. Another 30 percent suffer permanent brain damage.
If he hadn’t gone to the hospital, if he had continued on with practice like normal and the bleeding continued and eventually worsened, he might have ended up with irreparable brain damage, or worse.
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Surgery occurred a little later for Ball, with surgeons basically untangling the vessels, stopping the bleeding, and putting them back where they’re supposed to be. Ball was essentially fixed, but his journey, another journey, was just starting.
He worked hard in recovery, the same way he worked hard on the field, putting his non-stop motor to use in a different area. Little by little, Ball regained strength, but he missed the 2011 season, and his football future remained in doubt. Even though Ball’s brain condition had been fixed, he had still gone through brain surgery, and there is always that nagging thought that maybe his head can’t take another blow.
He continued his trek back, and in June of 2012, 16 months after his brain operation, he was cleared to play again. Another two months passed before he strapped on the pads again. But one and a half years after a dangerous condition nearly took his life, he suited up and practiced with his team. In 2012, Ball ended up playing 11 games for the Gators, and totaled 10 tackles with his only career interception.
The knee surgery is likely to cost Ball his rookie year, as the recovery for a microfracture procedure can take anywhere from nine to 15 months. NBA players have returned in six months, but that’s a completely different game. It usually takes football players longer to get back. If Ball approaches this recovery with the same vigor and gusto he’s become known for, his return could fall on the lower end of the scale.
Ball may never become an impact player in the NFL. He may never change a game single-handedly. Quite honestly, he may never play a down in the league. But he will work harder than anyone else who steps on the practice field. He has no choice. You never know when it all is going to go away.