Scoop Bradshaw hurtled down the left sideline. His objective was simple: Stop the kick returner.

Syracuse had taken a 14-7 lead late in the first quarter against then-No. 2 Clemson in the Carrier Dome, but Clemson’s Travis Etienne received the kickoff and burst up the middle. He crossed the 20-yard line and was met from the right by Bradshaw, who threw his body in front of Etienne, sending him tumbling to the ground before he even crossed the 30.

“I was thinking real fast and dove at him and tried to wrap around him,” Bradshaw said. “When I wrapped around him, I didn’t even feel the pop in my bone. When I landed on the turf and stopped, that’s when I felt the pain. I just looked at it, and oh, something ain’t right.

“That’s the worst injury I’ve ever had.”

Cradling his right arm, Bradshaw stayed down. He said medical staff surrounded him and, after a litany of X-rays and MRIs, came the diagnosis: Bradshaw had dislocated his right elbow.

Despite the injury, Bradshaw only missed one game of the 2017 season post-injury. After finishing last season on one good arm, Bradshaw is back to his old self and is ready to lean on last season’s experience to help lead a young and thin group of defensive backs.

“Right now my arm is stronger, better,” Bradshaw said. “One hundred percent.”

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As doctors attended to Bradshaw on the field, the first order of business was to reset his elbow. The medical staff attempted to put Bradshaw’s elbow back in place three separate times, he said, before yielding and taking him to the locker room. The injury caused his hand to swell up, too. The pain was incomparable to anything he has ever felt, he said.

“It was hard for me to even sleep at night,” Bradshaw said. He paused. “That pain was different … you don’t want to feel it.”

For a while, it seemed SU was without a starting cornerback. The next weekend in Miami, Bradshaw watched from the sidelines helplessly as Syracuse dropped a close game to a then-Top 10 Hurricanes team.

Bradshaw, a native of Tampa, Florida, had his family in the stands. They went to watch Bradshaw on the field, but instead offered him the support he needed, he said.

Syracuse had a bye week after playing Miami, but was back in Florida the week after for a showdown with Florida State in Tallahassee. Bradshaw knew his family was going to be at that game, too, and made sure to do everything in his power to play.

He worked extensively with SU’s training staff and established that, so long as he could play effectively through the pain, he was cleared. But the injury was a constant source of pain. Bradshaw was taking generic pain medication such as ibuprofen, he said, but nothing helped.

It hurt most when he played football.

“The pain was going to be there regardless,” Bradshaw said. So he had to play through it.

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If coaches and doctors were going to let Bradshaw play, he was going to play. At Florida State it was for his parents, he said. The rest of the way it was for his team. And it was for himself, too.

He admitted he wasn’t as effective playing with one healthy arm, and the pain sometimes inhibited him from competing fully. But it was still experience. The 2017 season was Bradshaw’s first chance to make a splash at Syracuse as a starter, and if the injury wasn’t going to keep him off the field, he would be out there.

After the end of the season and a full regimen of spring practices, Bradshaw is feeling himself again. In what both cornerback Christopher Frederick and safety Evan Foster admitted is an inexperienced group of defensive backs, Bradshaw will be a steady hand, setting an example like he did last year.

“It sets a great tone,” Foster said. “It shows us that we can do anything through any type of pain.”

At the end of Syracuse’s practice on March 29, the defensive backs ran a drill that had them sprinting down the field like a wide receiver. A coach lofted a ball overhead, and it was the player’s job to acquire the target and snatch it out of the air.

When it was Bradshaw’s turn, he bobbled the ball slightly and it nearly bounced away from him, but he swung up his right arm and pinned it to his body, securing the catch.

There was no pain, no discomfort. Just a catch.

Published on April 13, 2018 at 10:08 am

Contact Andrew: aegraham@syr.edu | @A_E_Graham