The touchdowns. The big plays. The cheers from the crowd. That\u2019s what every NFL receiver dreams of. At his best, former Pittsburgh Steelers WR Markus Wheaton made those plays. But his career was unfortunately defined more by injuries than receptions. The glory of playing football is gone. The injuries? They remain.<\/p>\n
Opening up in a candid interview on the Road Less Traveled podcast last month,<\/a> Wheaton discussed a difficult NFL career he\u2019s still feeling the impacts of.<\/p>\n \u201cToo many to count,\u201d Wheaton said when asked by host Tiffany Rosenbaum how many injuries he suffered. \u201cToo many to count. There was a lot of surgeries on the back end. There was concussions, right? So my brain is a little messed up. I\u2019m dealing with that day-to-day.\u201d<\/p>\n Wheaton didn\u2019t specify the challenges he still faces today but the long-lasting impacts of concussions are now well-known. Memory loss, mood swings, and CTE that has resulted in the death of many players, including Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, have all been the results of playing football.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear how many head injuries Wheaton suffered over his career but he used the pluralized \u201cconcussion\u201d in the interview. In 2012 while still at Oregon State, he was placed into concussion protocol after a mid-air collision against Washington State.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I shook out of it, I knew what was going on but at the moment I was dazed,\u201d he said at the time after the game.<\/a><\/p>\n Despite the injury, Wheaton played in Oregon State\u2019s next contest against Arizona State. Every concussion is different but players generally miss at least a week of action. Returning too soon from a concussion and suffering additional hits to the head can compound the injury, as NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. once relayed<\/a> (and was healed by Pittsburgh-based doctor Micky Collins).<\/p>\n Concussions were the most serious but far from the only injury Markus Wheaton suffered. Per Draft Sharks,<\/a> he had the following injuries:<\/p>\n \u2013 Multiple finger fractures A third-round pick of the Steelers in 2013, Wheaton said the injury he suffered in 2017, released by the Steelers and signed by the Chicago Bears<\/a>, was most frustrating.<\/p>\n \u201cI go to catch a ball, and my pinky finger, the bone comes out of my pinky,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I look at my hand and my pinky\u2019s off to the side. There\u2019s blood, and I take my glove off. And I\u2019m like fuck. And it freaking ate me up.\u201d<\/p>\n Wheaton explained the injury only furthered his \u201cfragile\u201d label and planted doubt in the Bears who had just signed him.<\/p>\n \u201cCalled my Dad,\u201d he said after getting word from doctors he needed surgery. \u201cI don\u2019t cry much. I don\u2019t think I ever cry. But it hit me hard. I was so frustrated. It was eating me up. \u201cThat was probably the worst I was mentally when it came to the injuries.<\/p>\n He appeared in 11 games with the Bears that year but caught just three passes before barely playing the following season. The Philadelphia Eagles took a flier on him in 2019 but cut him in September. Wheaton cited poor mental health \u2013 \u201cI was messed up\u201d \u2013 as the reason he retired. He now invests in real estate and is the managing partner for an Arizona landscaping company.<\/a><\/p>\n Across six NFL seasons and a possible 96 games, Markus Wheaton appeared in only 59 of them. When on the field, he made plays and his 201-yard performance against the Seattle Seahawks in 2015 remains one of the best by a Steelers\u2019 receiver this century. But he\u2019ll remain a \u201cwhat-if\u201d because of those injuries. The silver lining is Wheaton has a much better understanding of his head injuries than players before him, allowing him to get any future help he needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The touchdowns. The big plays. The cheers from the crowd. That\u2019s what every NFL receiver dreams of. At…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[7,22172,6,520,57,2360,426,22173],"class_list":{"0":"post-76196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-markus-wheaton","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","13":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","14":"tag-steelers","15":"tag-tiffany-rosenbaum"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114564575069595038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2013 Shoulder sprain
\u2013 Torn labrum
\u2013 Torn groin
\u2013 Hamstring strain<\/p>\n