Near-death experience at heart of Ryan Clarks game-day drive -

It was during a 2007 game at Denver’s Mile High Stadium that Ryan Clark suffered an acute, debilitating pain in his left side. As a carrier of the sickle-cell trait, he had developed a life-threatening condition due to the 5,280-feet altitude and physical stress.

It was an extreme complication, normally seen only in those with the full-blown blood disorder. But it demanded that Ryan undergo emergency surgery to remove his spleen and gall bladder, which ended his 2007 NFL season.

The experience also changed the way he approaches game-days after battling to recover, regain the 30 pounds he lost and reclaim the muscle mass and fitness needed to rejoin the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2008.

Now an advocate for sickle-cell awareness, Clark hasn’t discussed his near-death experience in football-centric conversations since returning to Washington as a free agent this spring. But he referenced it this week, as the team returned to practice following its 45-14 drubbing at the hands of the New York Giants — a game in which Coach Jay Gruden and several players suggested the Redskins took a victory for granted.

Asked about that attitude, Clark, who turns 35 later this month, said, “You’ve got to talk to the other 52 guys (on the roster). I don’t have organs; I almost died. I love ‘em all! I play ‘em all hard.”

Washington’s starting free safety, Clark said he was at a loss to understand how any player on a team that has posted a 3-13 record the previous season and was 1-2 heading into the Giants game could have assumed he’d play well.

“That’s personal; that’s individual,” said Clark, who was honored with the NFL’s Ed Block Courage Award in 2008. “If that’s the way some people in this locker room looked at it, it’s a terrible sense of entitlement.

And though he is regarded as a leader of the Redskins’ defense, Clark noted that there were limits to the effect he could have.

“I can’t make a man want it; I can’t make a man focus,” Clark said. “I can’t make a man understand who he’s supposed to work and or approach each game. All I can do is approach ‘em all the same — all like it’s the last one I’ll play or it’s the last opportunity I’ll get to play this game, because it could be. I was faced with that before; not many people were.”