INDIANAPOLIS To this day, Shaun Ellis thinks Deon Grant wouldn t have survived. Not with the way the windshield and door on the passenger s side were both smashed in after Ellis fell asleep at the wheel on the way back to campus in the wee hours of March 16, 1998.
After Ellis veered off the road, he somehow emerged from the Ford Taurus lodged between two trees on a mountainside with a broken hip, a busted lip and glass embedded in his face.
Grant was supposed to be in the car with him. With spring practice approaching at the University of Tennessee, he had planned to meet Ellis in South Carolina to make the trek back. But because Grant needed to get back to Knoxville a day earlier than planned, he caught a ride from someone else.
He wouldn t have made it. That s how close Ellis said, his voice trailing off. His life could ve changed. Or ended.
Ellis showed Grant the morbid photos of the wreckage, but Grant has a different take on what would ve happened. With some company on the ride, he s sure Ellis wouldn t have fallen asleep at the wheel.
I might ve been up when that happened and I could ve been talking to him or playing music or whatever, Grant said.
Instead, 12 years after the two left Tennessee together for the 2000 NFL Draft, in which they were selected 45 picks from each other, they will be on opposing sidelines today with their first Super Bowl ring on the line.
The two talk often and see each other whenever possible it was easier when Grant joined the Giants last season and Ellis was close by as member of the Jets but the past two weeks have been all business. For Ellis, it s his first Super Bowl after 11 years with the Jets, the final two of which ended with losses in the AFC Championship Game. It will be Grant s second Super Bowl he and the Panthers lost to the Patriots in Super Bowl XVI.
I figured I d talk to him once the week is over with, the 34-year-old Ellis said. Right now, my mindset is about going in and winning this game. It s not about personal relationships even though me and him are really close so it s just one of those things we ll catch up in the offseason.
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