Rutgers Football, Eric LeGrand and One Simple Word: Believe

It's the fourth quarter with 5:16 left, Rutgers and Army tied at 17. Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand rushes down the field to make a routine stop on special teams. The next split second his life changed dramatically.

Shock and awe filled the stadium, like the air had just vanished out of nowhere. Paramedics quickly attended the fallen player.

Eric LeGrand suffered an injury to the C3 and C4 level of his vertebrate. The devastating injury paralyzed LeGrand from the neck down.

"It feels like there's a thousand pounds holding it down and it won't move," Eric LeGrand said to ESPN's Tom Rinaldi about trying to put his hand up in the air to give the crowd a thumbs up to signal he was ok.

"That's what this all feels like basically, when you try to move there's a thousand pounds on you and you can't move it," LeGrand finished solemnly. 

Being from New Jersey and, actually near Rutgers University, never have I seen a community rally around someone before like this. Facebook statuses, T-shirts, friends going to the game with signs saying the simple word "Believe" on it.

LeGrand and his family have gained some optimism for him as he has begun to have some sensation in his body and movement in his shoulders again.

After LeGrand was paralyzed he was taken into emergency surgery that lasted nine hours to stabilize his spine. From there, doctors gave LeGrand a 0-5 percent chance of regaining some sort of neurological function.

"I didn't want to hear that two percent of the people with this injury can walk, or five percent regain this, or I didn't want to hear about percentages because my son, in all honesty, is not a percentage. My son is my son. And nobody knows him, nobody knows the will that he has, nobody knows the faith that we have." said Eric's mother Karen LeGrand who never informed her son of that 0-5 percent chance.

After surgery LeGrand was transferred to the Kessler Institute in West Orange, New Jersey. From there he continues to have optimism to walk again. From there it's a long road ahead of him and for him to walk again, New Jersey, and the rest of the World—believe.