Travis Long went down with his third ACL tear in four years. Long walked off the field after a seemingly innocuous special teams drill, but later on that evening team doctors diagnosed the tear.
It was then that head coach Chip Kelly sat down and spoke to the young linebacker, trying to put the right words together to console 24-year old who has never gotten his chance to shine in Philadelphia.
“We were in a punt return drill and it wasn’t even really a contact drill,” Kelly explained. “He just kind of stepped the wrong way, and I think he knew it when it happened just because it’s happened to him before.