“If I watch a game on Sunday and there’s a serious injury, I know the phone’s going to ring,” says Darryl Stingley, at home in his downtown condo. It rang this year when Seattle receiver Darrell Jackson suffered seizures after an on-field collision. It rang again when Pittsburgh quarterback Tommy Maddox was temporarily paralyzed by a hit he can’t remember. “Reporters say, ‘Let’s ask somebody who’s been over the middle,’” says Stingley. “A lot of guys have played football, but not many have been through what I have.”
Saturday, August 12, 1978. It’s late in the second quarter of a game between the Oakland Raiders and the New England Patriots in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The Raiders lead by three but the Patriots are driving. It’s third and eight at the Oakland 24. Patriot quarterback Steve Grogan calls “94 Slant,” a quick throw from a three-step drop. Wide receivers Stanley Morgan and Darryl Stingley will run slant-in patterns from opposite sides of the field, and Stingley is the primary option. He sprints eight yards downfield then cuts diagonally. The route is designed to leave him open for an instant between the linebackers and cornerback. The ball needs to arrive just after Stingley makes his break. But Grogan’s pass is late, and high, and off target. Stingley leaps for the ball with arms outstretched, but it wobbles past him. Cornerback Lester Hayes closes hard on the errant throw, reaching with his right hand, but can’t make the interception.
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Raider free safety Jack Tatum watches the play develop from the five-yard line. Reading Grogan, he begins moving toward Stingley before the ball is thrown. When Stingley goes airborne, Tatum is bearing down at an opposing diagonal. Tatum dips his head and buries his helmet in Stingley as the receiver descends, cracking Stingley across the head and neck with a forearm. Tatum straightens after the hit, looking down at the Patriot receiver lying on the ten yard line, as the ball skids through the end zone.
“There was an attempt to get us together in the last few years,” says Stingley. “Fox television got involved. [Studio host] Jim Brown was going to mediate, and Fox was going to make a large donation to my foundation. Then my lawyer called at the 11th hour and told me that it was all publicity for Tatum, that he was releasing his book. I couldn’t do it. We canceled, lost the donation.
In the fall and winter, Darryl Stingley spends quiet days in his condo with Tina, trying to avoid the respiratory infections to which he’s susceptible. He monitors Derek’s football team, dotes on his seven grandchildren, listens to a vast jazz collection (“Just bought some Miles, some Phyllis Hyman,” he says. “That music calls me”), and operates his charitable foundation. Stingley routinely lends his name and support to paralysis research, but he established his foundation to address a different, deeply personal cause: providing educational assistance to west-side schools near his old Lawndale neighborhood.
“A lot of people told me I’d be wasting my time starting this foundation. Mentors of mine said this,” Stingley says. “But you see kids out there learning to set goals. You tell them, ‘You don’t have to be consumed by the environment, don’t have to be a product of the environment. You just have to want to be better.’
