Former LB Chris Spielman Remembers Tearing His Pec Trying To Avoid Dermontti Dawson

Former Detroit Lions NFL linebacker Chris Spielman doesn’t just have the memories of playing against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He’s got the scars to prove it. In a recent episode joining the With The First Pick podcast with hosts Ryan Wilson and father Rick Spielman, Chris remembers injuring himself in the 1995 opener against the Steelers.

“Dermontti Dawson, who is the best center I ever played against. I was able to slip Dermontti because he was so quick. So I’d set him up and kinda come underneath. Dermontti could recover so quick. Right as I went to [tackle] Jerome and get him down, Dermontti Dawson hit me in the back…I admire that because he’s doing whatever he has to do to get the job done. Which is fine. I felt this pop. I popped my pec.”

Spielman does seem to get one fact about the story wrong. He references trying to tackle Jerome Bettis. But this injury took place in 1995, one year before the Los Angeles Rams dealt Bettis to Pittsburgh.

Regardless of the who, the outcome was the same. Spielman ripped his pec in the first quarter of the first game of the year. Not that it stopped him from playing.

“I go back to the huddle. And my arm is [horizontal]. I told my buddy Mark Splinder. I said Mark, punch my arm down. So he took two punches, put my arm down. This happened in the first quarter. Played the rest of the game, didn’t miss a practice. But the whole game after every play, it’d spasm.”

In fact, Chris Spielman wouldn’t miss a single game the entire year. But getting himself ready each week was difficult, gross, and probably medically inadvisable. In December of that year, the Detroit Free-Press outlined the gory details. 

“Not long before the Thanksgiving game, a giant blister-like growth burst, and Spielman was oozing blood and dead tissue for 45 minutes. By the time the injury turned the corner, he would shed 2,300 cc’s of blood. In familiar terms, that is more than half a gallon.”

It would be his last year in Detroit before spending his final two seasons with the Buffalo Bills. There, he would play the Steelers and Bettis, a 24-6 loss in 1996.

I’ve gone back and tried to find the play Chris Spielman was injured on. But because he stayed in the game, it’s hard to know which one it was. It may have happened on this Erric Pegram toss, Dawson hitting Spielman from behind, but it’s hard to say. And nearly 30 years later, Spielman can still show you exactly what happened.