Just short of 21 months ago, Washington Football Team quarterback Alex Smith suffered one of the most devastating leg injuries anyone has ever seen on a football field — one eerily similar in type (and circumstance) to the one that ended the playing career of Washington quarterback Joe Theismann exactly 33 years before.
But unlike Theismann, Smith’s leg became infected. He ended up enduring not a single surgery (as Theismann had), but a total of 17 operations documented by a grisly ESPN special released in the spring.