Doyel: Injury to Colts' Brandon Williams latest reminder that the NFL is a monster

• Colts at Ravens, 4:30 p.m. Dec. 23, NFL

INDIANAPOLIS – The Brandon Williams video is shocking. Violence, velocity, brutality – not there, any of it – and I think that’s what makes the video so terrifying. Nothing happened, nothing unusual, nothing that doesn’t happen scores of times, hundreds of times, in an NFL game.

The Indianapolis Colts are punting. Williams, a reserve tight end, is lined up on the left edge. Across the line of scrimmage from him is 6-5, 253-pound Denver Broncos linebacker Deiontrez Mount. The ball is snapped and here comes Mount, taking five choppy steps before reaching the 6-3, 260-pound Williams. They butt heads like two mountain goats, the foreheads of their helmets colliding, and if I’m making it sound awful, I’m doing this wrong. Because it wasn’t awful. It wasn’t anything.

Williams falls backward, with Mount clinging to his jersey as they go down together. Mount gets up. Williams does not.

The Brandon Williams video ends the same way every time, and I must have watched it 40 times on a loop, over and over and over, looking for something at the beginning of the video that might explain what we saw at the end: Williams being strapped to a board, helmet still on, facemask removed with a screwdriver. A cadre of 12 or more medical personnel fussing tenderly over Williams at midfield of the Colts’ 25-13 loss Thursday to the Denver Broncos. Williams being loaded onto a cart and driven off the field, out of the stadium and into a waiting ambulance.

Coming 10 days after Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier was strapped to a board and carted off the field in Cincinnati with a grotesque-looking injury that required spine-stabilization surgery, this was the worst-case scenario of a Thursday Night Football game that didn’t seem to have a worst-case scenario. Colts and Broncos? Both already had been eliminated from the playoffs before kickoff. Not sure about the fans in Denver, but around here the worst-case scenario coming into the game might well have been a Colts victory, one that would have moved them farther away from the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. The Colts were never a threat to get that pick, but a string of losses to close the season would put them safely in the top five.

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Doesn’t seem so important now, does it? Does anything about the Colts seem important now, anything other than the health of Brandon Williams?

That feeling will pass, of course, perhaps before all of us finish this story. Not trying to be remorseless, just real, and the reality is this: We’ll get over the sight of Brandon Williams lying on the board, staring up into the ceiling, blinking against the lights at Lucas Oil Stadium. We’ll get over the sight of Colts safeties Darius Butler and Matthias Farley leaving the sideline to say something to Brandon on his way to the locker room, followed by tight end Jack Doyle, then followed by the entire team. Every Colt – the ones on defense waiting for play to resume, and the rest of the team on the sideline – walked to midfield to lock eyes with Williams or gently tap the cart or shout a few words of support.

Coach Chuck Pagano announced after the game that Williams was back at the stadium in the training room with a concussion. "It was a pretty scary thing," Pagano said. "But he's doing well." Williams did not suffer an injury to his neck.

Nothing good about a head injury, obviously, but Williams entered the NFL with a troubling spine issue: stenosis, the congenital narrowing of the spinal cord, a condition that ended his career at Oregon after his junior season in 2010. Heartbroken, Williams looked into getting a job as a cop, starting as an unarmed security guard on a bicycle, before finding a doctor that would clear him to return to football – and finding an interested team in the Carolina Panthers.

Williams made his NFL debut in 2013 and has been in the league ever since, not a star, barely a starter, just more meat for the grinder. The NFL goes through bodies like a dragster goes through tires, and Brandon Williams has one hell of a body, one of the most impressive-looking physiques in a Colts locker room full of them. One more thing I can tell you about Brandon, about the only other thing I can tell you about a player I knew next-to-nothing about until Thursday night: He always makes eye contact with me in the locker room. Most pro athletes don’t, not with the media, whether from arrogance or indifference or maybe even shyness. Brandon Williams has always given me the courtesy of eye contact. As if I’m worth being acknowledged. Always appreciated that.

Wish I’d told him that.

Look at me, writing as if Brandon Williams has suffered a mortal injury. From all accounts, he has not. Williams was concussed when he butted heads with Deiontrez Mount. Bad concussion, terrible concussion, I don’t know. They’re not saying, and medical matters are private. Excuse me for not prying one whole hell of a lot.

Strange as this sounds, I’ve been gone for 10 minutes. I’m back here writing again after taking a break to watch the video again, over and over on a loop, and now I think I see it: Williams and Mount bang foreheads, and Williams starts to backpedal, and then it happens. Williams’ left leg goes straight and doesn’t bend again, as if Williams is no longer in control of it. His right knee buckles. He is falling now, not because he was tripped and not because he was knocked over. No, he’s just falling.

And Mount is trying to break his fall. That’s why the Denver linebacker still has Williams’ jersey in his hands, it looks to me. He’s trying to catch Williams – and he does, preventing the Colts tight end from banging the back of his head on the turf. When the video ends, Mount is staring down into Williams’ eyes. I imagine he is concerned by what he is seeing, or not seeing, but I don’t know that.

Forgive me for the conjecture. I’m just trying to make sense of something that looked so terribly normal. The Shazier injury, that was horrific from the start. He lowers his head when he hits Cincinnati receiver Josh Malone, the crown of his head appearing to hit the bone of Malone’s hip. Shazier goes down and clutches at his back with one hand, as if he’s trying to remove a knife, while making a fist over and over with the other hand. Something terrible has happened. That is clear with Ryan Shazier.

With Brandon Williams? Nothing is clear, only that the NFL is an unforgiving sport, but we already knew that. Williams’ injury happens on a night when the Broncos lost starting quarterback Trevor Siemian (elbow) and receiver Emmanuel Sanders (ankle), and the Colts lost tackle Denzelle Good (knee) and linebacker Jeremiah George (neck), and saw receiver T.Y. Hilton (hand) and running back Frank Gore (knee) also leave the game before returning. Star quarterback Andrew Luck (shoulder) is somewhere in Europe, getting his injury looked at.

The NFL is crushing but uncrushable, the country’s most popular sport by a large margin even with concussion issues, social issues from players kneeling for the anthem, even faulty football issues. It’s worth repeating: The bad Broncos and truly terrible Colts played on national television Thursday night. By halftime Trevor Siemian and Brandon Williams were trending on Twitter – in Vietnam.

The NFL is the monster that cannot be killed, and I’m OK with that. And I think that’s what bothers me most about what happened Thursday night. Not that Brandon Williams suffered such a serious injury on such a normal-looking play. No, what bothers me most is that he suffered that injury on that normal play – and it’s not going to change our viewing habits one bit.

Maybe the NFL isn’t the monster. Maybe the monster is us.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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