NFL

Giants’ Sash thinking of ailing Iowa teammate

HEART TO HEART: Tyler Sash (left) and Brett Greenwood share a laugh during Media Day at Iowa in 2010. This week, Sash is preparing for the Super Bowl in Indianapolis while Greenwood recovers from an apparent heart attack back in Iowa. (Getty Images)

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INDIANAPOLIS — Tyler Sash didn’t need to be wined and dined on his official visit to the University of Iowa four years ago. He didn’t need the spirit squad to flirt with him, didn’t need a tour of the football-friendly frat houses or the walkable watering holes. Maybe the Iowa coaches knew that already. Or maybe they got lucky.

Either way, they asked Brett Greenwood to be Sash’s host for the weekend.

“You know how sometimes you just hit it off with somebody, and you have a pretty good idea you’re going to be friends?” Sash, the Giants’ rookie safety and special-teams stalwart, asked yesterday. “That was how I felt five minutes after meeting Brett. We had so much in common. Starting with the fact that both of us preferred a night in, listening to music, playing video games, than going out.”

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That was the start of a beautiful partnership — in the Hawkeyes’ defensive backfield, where they were both ball-hawking safeties for three years — and off the field, too. They roomed on the road. They worked out together. In consecutive offseasons, they had shoulder surgeries on the same day.

Sash’s first day on campus, Greenwood knocked on his door.

“Follow me,” he said, and Greenwood — who started his career as a walk-on, and for all he knew, was befriending a player who would swipe playing time — took his new teammate to a darkened room where for two hours they studied film.

“He wanted me to know the defense from day one, so I wouldn’t fall behind,” Sash said. “Maybe that tells you what kind of a guy we’re talking about.”

Last September, Sash was hurting for his old friend. Greenwood had signed with the Steelers as an undrafted free agent and survived every cut of Pittsburgh’s abbreviated training camp, until the final day. Sash, the Giants’ sixth-round pick, was buried in his own professional plight, having made the team and now fighting for reps. He sent Greenwood a series of texts, short bursts of encouragement he knew would be unnecessary.

“If there was ever someone who was going to turn a negative into a positive,” Sash said, “it was Brett.”

On the night of Sept. 9, though, Sash was online when a most impossible item started to circulate, mostly on Iowa fan boards and on Twitter: Brett Greenwood, these anonymous posters said, was dead.

For 20 awful minutes, Sash tried to find more details, more information, but could not, the speculation growing like weeds, Sash’s soul bursting. Finally, the phone rang. It was Pat Angerer, an old Iowa teammate, now a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts.

“He’s not dead,” Angerer said. “But it’s not good.”

Earlier that day, Greenwood had gone to Pleasant Valley High School in his native Betterndorf, Iowa, to work out, the routine he had followed every day since the Steelers let him go. He ran into his old athletic director, Randy Teymer, and asked if he could do some drills on the field, and the AD was delighted to say yes.

“Typical Brett,” Sash said. “Figuring you can outwork your setbacks.”

One minute, Teymer was smiling as he saw a smattering of football players greeting and encouraging Pleasant Valley’s greatest alum.

The next, Greenwood was lying on the turf. And he wasn’t breathing.

Luckily, there were football games that night, so there were trainers and nurses on hand to perform CPR. Greenwood’s heart had stopped from an apparent heart attack. One shock from a defibrillator restored a pulse, and he was rushed to Trinity Bettendorf Hospital and later airlifted to University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City.

There, he stayed in a medically-induced coma for 42 days.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles due east along I-80, Tyler Sash was preparing for a rookie season with his brain and his heart divided by dueling loyalties to his career and his ill friend back in Iowa. NFL players can’t just take impromptu road trips in the middle of the season, especially rookies with something to prove.

Finally in mid-October, thanks to the Giants’ bye week, he flew to Iowa City. In the space of 48 hours, a fund-raising appearance was hastily scheduled, arranged and publicized at Scheels All Sports in Coralville, with the intention of pushing a few hundred dollars toward the cause. There was one newspaper ad, lots of word-of-mouth, and by 2:30 on the afternoon of Oct. 21, there was already a line out the door.

It was a modest setup with modest goals: Sash would sign helmets, jerseys, pictures and paper scraps, and would ask for a $1 donation. Even if it raised only a few hundred bucks, he figured it would be something.

“And the most amazing thing happened,” Matt Phippen, the Scheels manager, said. “He’s signing all these items, but there are also folks who stop by, shake his hand, say, ‘I don’t want an autograph, I just want to help.’ And they drop in $20, or $50, or write checks and toss them in the bucket. He signed for 2 1/2 hours.”

And instead of a couple hundred dollars, the event raised more than $2,000.

“It was the least a friend could do,” Sash said. “He’d have done the same for me.”

By then, Greenwood had finally awoken from his coma, asking his nurses for details of the Steelers’ most recent game against the Titans. His recovery continues in a therapy facility in Ankeny, 10 miles north of Des Moines and 500 miles west of Indianapolis, where on Sunday Tyler Sash — fully recovered from a concussion suffered against the 49ers in the NFC title game — will play in the Super Bowl.

But not by, or for, himself.

“Brett has been with me every step of my life the last four years,” Sash said. “And I can promise you he’ll be there on Sunday. I’m playing for two.”