The touchdowns. The big plays. The cheers from the crowd. That’s 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.
Opening up in a candid interview on the Road Less Traveled podcast last month, Wheaton discussed a difficult NFL career he’s still feeling the impacts of.
“Too many to count,” Wheaton said when asked by host Tiffany Rosenbaum how many injuries he suffered. “Too 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’m dealing with that day-to-day.”
Wheaton didn’t 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.
It’s not clear how many head injuries Wheaton suffered over his career but he used the pluralized “concussion” in the interview. In 2012 while still at Oregon State, he was placed into concussion protocol after a mid-air collision against Washington State.
“Once I shook out of it, I knew what was going on but at the moment I was dazed,” he said at the time after the game.
Despite the injury, Wheaton played in Oregon State’s 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 (and was healed by Pittsburgh-based doctor Micky Collins).
Concussions were the most serious but far from the only injury Markus Wheaton suffered. Per Draft Sharks, he had the following injuries:
– Multiple finger fractures
– Shoulder sprain
– Torn labrum
– Torn groin
– Hamstring strain
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, was most frustrating.
“I go to catch a ball, and my pinky finger, the bone comes out of my pinky,” he said. “And I look at my hand and my pinky’s off to the side. There’s blood, and I take my glove off. And I’m like fuck. And it freaking ate me up.”
Wheaton explained the injury only furthered his “fragile” label and planted doubt in the Bears who had just signed him.
“Called my Dad,” he said after getting word from doctors he needed surgery. “I don’t cry much. I don’t think I ever cry. But it hit me hard. I was so frustrated. It was eating me up. “That was probably the worst I was mentally when it came to the injuries.
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 – “I was messed up” – as the reason he retired. He now invests in real estate and is the managing partner for an Arizona landscaping company.
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’ receiver this century. But he’ll remain a “what-if” 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.
