Adam Redden lay unable to move in a dark basement.
The hard-hitting high school sophomore had experienced his biggest collision – only it didn’t happen on the gridiron. It was in the passenger seat of a Pontiac Firebird. Redden was stuck bed-ridden in his Amherst home.
A drunk driver was leaving one bar for another and ran a red light, T-boning Redden and his father as they drove down Route 5 in Buffalo on Nov. 2, 2007. The two were coming from St. Francis High School’s playoff victory over St. Bishop Timon – in which Redden scored the game-winning touchdown.
“I’m just biting on pizza and then all I hear is, ‘Oh shoot’ and then my dad grabs me and after that I just wake up in the hospital,” Redden said.
The Cadillac hit the Firebird’s driver side, causing it to go airborne. Its passenger side – Redden’s side – wrapped around an electrical pole. He suffered a lacerated kidney and a pinched nerve and spent four and a half months in and out of the hospital learning how to walk again.
He thought returning home meant his life would return to normal.
“Even though you think all the chaos ends, it really just begins,” Redden said.
The blackness of his bedroom in his parents’ basement took over. He thought about 3.989 GPA. He thought about his football career. He was unsure if either would ever be the same.
“I [was] at my lowest,” Redden said. “I kind of asked God ‘Why me?’”
Redden said he got his answer the next day.
“It just happened like day and night. One day I was down, the next day my life hit me and I understood my purpose and it was to give back,” Redden said. “He gave me my answer because he worked me up to what I should be doing. I should be doing more than just a sport.”
He joined high school clubs – one for every day of the week. He volunteered in programs like D.A.R.E. He said his eyes opened up to music, politics and the medical field. He also returned to the football field.
With a new outlook on life, Redden wanted to be a "Renaissance man.”
And he may not be too far off his goal. He’s a Division-I football player and an All Mid-American Conference senior safety for Buffalo. He’s working toward a degree in pharmacy and toxicology. He sings and even cuts his teammates’ hair.
Ask someone to describe Adam Redden, and the words “passionate” and “intense” will probably come up. They’ll tell you he lives his life the same way on the field that he does off it. That’s because Redden is not concerned with only being a great football player.
“That whole experience just taught me how to value life and at any moment it can be taken away from you,” Redden said. “At any moment things can be taken away from you so value them.”
***
Football is personal to Redden.
He doesn’t smile during games because he feels his opponents are personally slighting him by trying to take away what he and his teammates have worked for: a win.
“I’m kind of a family guy so I take it personal when I’m on the field like ‘Don’t take nothing from my boys because we came here for a win,’” Redden said.
He sees football players as “modern day gladiators.” He wants his opponents to know he is “not some pushover.”
Anyone who has watched a Bulls’ defensive play or personally felt Redden’s helmet or shoulder pad level them to the turf, would probably not use the word “pushover” to describe him.
“He just wanted to inflict pain on other people,” said Nate Suhana, Redden’s St. Francis High School trainer.
Redden’s hits often leave his opponents slow to get off the turf. He even leveled his own teammate, junior running back Anthone Taylor, for a loss in this season’s Blue-White scrimmage.
“I say, ‘Why Adam? Why did you have to tackle them like that?’” Latica Neely, Redden’s mother, asks him.
Redden’s usual respond is “Mom, this is football, this is what I’m supposed to do.”
Latica never misses her oldest son’s games. Her Saturdays in UB Stadium are nerve-racking though. She is inwardly praying and worrying while outwardly cheering. When Redden makes a play, coaches, teammates and fans think of his talent – Latica Neely thinks of his kidney.
Redden said his mother read that every collision in football is similar to a car crash. That analogy gives Latica more worry than most parents, after she witnessed a car holding her husband and son go airborne and smack into an electrical pole.
Latica, Redden’s aunt and younger brother were in a car driving behind the ill-fated Pontiac Firebird on the night of Nov. 2, 2007. Latica calls the Firebird “that little red sports car” and she’s quick to point out she hated it.
“But men and their cars,” she explains.
Derrick now drives a Tahoe. Redden drives a Jeep.
“No more little cars,” Latica said. “Mama’s not going for it.”
***
Suhana, Redden’s high school trainer, walked out of his St. Francis High School office the night of the Red Raiders’ playoff victory over rival Bishop-Timon “pumped up.” St. Francis was set to play in the Monsignour Martin Association playoff championship game against Canisius High School at Ralph Wilson Stadium in a week.
That’s when someone ran into the school asking for a priest.
“We need to get one of the priests down there because it’s not looking good,” they told Suhana.
Derrick pulled his son away from the passenger door as the car went airborne after being T-boned. The act straightened Redden’s legs out and prevented them from being crushed under the dashboard, but not from being trapped.
Rescue workers removed Redden from the totaled car with Hydraulic rescue tools or “the jaws of life.” Redden remembers waking up for a moment inside the totaled car and hearing screams and sirens as rescue workers tried to free him. He describes the accident as “a bad rollercoaster ride.”
“Everybody thought it was over,” Latica said. “Everyone thought Adam was going to be paralyzed and never play again.”
Doctors discovered Redden had a lacerated kidney when he urinated blood at the hospital. He also had nerve damage in his back. He had to learn how to crawl again; once he mastered that, he moved onto standing up, walking and eventually jogging. Even after he returned home, someone had to help him walk up the stairs.
Derrick, his father, suffered three broken ribs and a herniated disk in his back and neck. He could not work as an Erie Country Sheriff for a year and had to walk with a cane.
***
Buffalo senior linebacker Lee Skinner has a theory as to why Redden plays so hard on the field.
“He really cares about guys,” Skinner said. “That’s what makes him so intense is the relationship he has off the field … It means a lot to him so that’s why he plays so hard.”
Redden brings his teammates home-cooked meals made by his mother, who considers herself “the honorary team mom.”
Talk to Latica for a few minutes and she might invite you over for dinner. She often has her son’s teammates over and feeds them cornbread, oxtail soup and macaroni and cheese in their Amherst, New York home. Redden said “anything you can think of, she can probably dish up.”
“[My mom is] always like, ‘Adam, bring a couple guys over,” Redden said. “And I’m like, ‘Mom, I have 105 [teammates].’ She’s like, ‘Well bring them all then.’”
Redden and his mother know not every Buffalo players’ family is close enough to come to their games and cook them meals.
“When I see guys whose families are miles away and can’t come to games, I think if I was in their shoes I would want someone to help me out,” Redden said.
Redden wants to help people the same way he was helped during his recovery from the accident.
His teammates wore Redden’s initials – A.R. – on the back of their helmets during their championship game victory over Canisius a week after the accident. Canisius even fundraised a couple thousand dollars for Redden’s medical bills. Football players from other Catholic schools whom he had never even met before came to see him.
“It opened my eyes up to people,” Redden said. “That’s when I became more social and reached out. I try to give back because when I was down and out, they still gave back to me.”
A pizzeria owner brought Redden pizza every day for the first week he was in the hospital.
“It kind of felt good that he has nothing to do with me with football, but he owns a pizzeria and he’s helping me out,” Redden said.
He doesn’t want to be defined as just a football player.
***
Redden said some people assume that a person is not smart because they’re an athlete and assume that someone who is smart can’t be athletic. If that were true, Redden is an anomaly.
This is Redden’s plan for himself after football: Become a pharmacist and eventually conduct neuroscience research to help people with schizophrenia and dementia. Win a Nobel Prize. Eventually write a book and make a movie on the side.
Redden doesn’t want to be known as just Adam Redden the hard-hitting senior safety for the Bulls. He wants to be known as Adam Redden the Renaissance man.
“A man is defined as a Renaissance man because he did more than just a sport,” Redden said. “He did more than just a musical. He did more than just art. He did more just politics. He did it all.”
He wants to be more than a football player because his mother told him to never be just a statistic. She told him to “never just let people think you’re an athlete. Never let people think you’re uneducated. Always try to be something more than what you are.”
Redden is more than just a football player and a pharmacist student. He’s also the “team barber.”
His first experience with a barber’s razor was shaving his own face during high school. St. Francis does not allow its students to have facial hair. Redden now sports a beard.
He started cutting his UB teammates’ hair during his freshman training camp. The Bulls needed haircuts, but could not leave the dorms, so Redden offered up his skills.
“They kind of trusted me, but I wasn’t too good then,” Redden said.
Redden now has a hair-cutting license and worked at Choppafellas Unisex Salon on Bailey Avenue down the street from UB South Campus, where his “skills became the skills you see today.”
He said Bulls’ defensive coordinator Lou Tepper “is begging [him] for a haircut.”
***
Redden returned to the practice field nine months after suffering nerve damage and a lacerated kidney the night of the accident. The Red Raiders called him the “Miracle Man.”
Suhana worked with Redden on loosening his back. He played linebacker his junior season because he was still regaining his pre-injury speed. Redden always wanted to do extra reps, but could have further injured himself if he pushed himself too hard.
“We had to hold him back because we were scared of what he was going to do to somebody else,” Suhana said.
Redden said the damaged nerve in his back and lacerated kidkey no longer cause him any complications. Redden is not bitter about the accident that nearly cost him football and his life. He points out he still has one good kidney.
He also says he’s not angry with the drunk driver who hit him and his father.
“No hard feelings towards her, I definitely wish her the best,” Redden said.
He knows his fate could have been worse.
***
One of the first solid foods Redden ate after the accident was a box of doughnuts from Famous Doughnuts on Main Street, which he said are “way better than Krispy Kreme’s.”
He took a bite out of every doughnut in the box so no one else would take one.
“After the accident, I was quiet,” Redden said. “I saw the box of doughnuts and you couldn’t shut me up.”
Deshanaro Morris, Redden’s friend and Sweet Home High School running back, injured his spinal cord in a car accident in 2008. Redden visited his friend in the hospital. He brought a box of Famous Doughnuts.
Redden recalled his “low point” after his own accident and wanted Morris to know he was not alone. He said keeping morale high is most important.
“Even though doctors say you may never walk again, in some cases you can walk. Never take no for an answer,” Redden said.
Morris still uses a wheelchair, but he was able to walk across the stage with a walker to receive his diploma in 2010. He now coaches football at schools in the intercity.
“It happened to play out that God took us on two different paths in life,” Redden said. “It’s weird how God chose me to keep playing and how God chose Deshanaro that his path is coaching now.”
Redden said he knows his fate could have been similar to Morris’ and he wouldn’t be Adam Redden the All-MAC safety. But even if he wasn’t playing football, Redden knows he would find his calling elsewhere.
***
The Bulls’ defense plays a 3-3-5 scheme: three defensive linemen, three linebackers, four defensive backs, and one ‘Adam Redden.’
He laughs when trying to explain his position for the Bulls.
Redden plays what is best described as a ‘hybrid safety/linebacker’ position, but he is adamant he is Buffalo’s strong safety.
“But at times it may seem like [my position is] linebacker but that’s just me trying to make a play out there,” Redden said.
He said he sometimes goes “off the script,” meaning he’ll move down with the linebackers to rush the backfield as opposed to doing what the play calls for him to do.
He’s amassed 17.5 tackles for losses and 6.5 sacks over the past two seasons with this strategy.
He likes to go “off script” on third downs when the Bulls need a big play. When Redden looks around and sees every other player on the field jittery and nervous in a big moment in the game, he thinks to himself ‘I’m not nervous at all.’
If the onus has to be on anybody, Redden said he wants it on himself.
He is confident he knows when the opposing offense will run a draw or quarterback sneak, because he’s watched their film and knows their tendencies.
“You can see I’m a gambler, and when I bet I’m usually correct,” Redden said.
These plays happen so fast that Redden doesn’t even know he’s correct until he hears the crowd cheer and his teammates celebrate. He claims he’s never been wrong in abandoning his coverage.
“I haven’t been wrong yet, so let’s not jinx it,” he said.
Redden said Bulls defensive coordinator Lou Tepper doesn’t mind when Redden deviates from the defensive play call. Redden explains to Tepper he just wants to make a play for his teammates, and coach understands. He can’t complain with the results.
Bulls head coach Jeff Quinn describes Redden as “flying around” on the field and calls Redden’s play “inspirational.”
“You see Adam make a big play that raises the level of play for the whole defense,” Skinner said.
***
Derrick, Redden’s father, has been whistling at every football game his son has ever played.
He blows a two-finger whistle to get Redden’s attention after he makes a big play. Redden said his father is “kind of short,” so the whistle helps him locate Derrick to give him a thumbs up or yell, “Yes sir!”
After so many years, Redden can distinguish the whistle from the officials’ and can hear it over the noise of 20,000 fans cheering in UB Stadium. He’s almost been trained to do so.
“I feel kind of shameful because I feel like a dog,” Redden laughs. “My ears perk up and I look for him. He’s been doing it since I was 7 and it still works to this day.”
He looks forward to hearing the whistle almost as much as he does making the play itself. It’s a moment of admiration between father and son. The whistle has a different meaning for Redden’s mother Latica.
Since the accident, she often urges her husband to whistle anytime Redden is involved in a big collision and or is slow to get up. Redden’s ‘thumbs up’ means he is OK to Latica.
“For me, if he didn’t play football it wouldn’t bother me,” Latica said. “But if he continues to play, I’ll be his biggest cheerleader.”
Redden wants to play football, but his story would not end if he stopped playing. He has other avenues to purse; Nobel peace prizes to win.
He won’t be defined as Adam Redden the football player. He’ll be defined as Adam Redden the Renaissance man.
email: sports@ubspectrum.com
Photo: Courtesy of Tal Hamel, Endvisionprod
Photo: Paul Hokanson/UB Athletics
