Stafford Recounts Trying To Get To Practice Following Bridge Collapse
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
ALLEN PARK (CBS DETROIT) - After a pedestrian bridge over the Southfield Freeway collapsed early Friday morning, Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, on his way to the team's practice facility, had a front-row seat for the aftermath. He detailed the experience Friday afternoon.
Stafford said it was about 5:50 a.m. when he came upon gridlocked traffic about a quarter of a mile away from the collapsed bridge, which had been hit by a truck.
"I got out of my car, I was trying to figure it out with some of the people that were all out of their cars, and I guess the front right of the truck was smashed in, and so somebody was like, 'I think he hit the pole on the right,' and ... it didn't really seem like that," Stafford said. "It seemed like on his half of the [freeway] that bridge was almost like something had hit it."
Stafford saw the driver of the truck that hit the bridge laying on the grass of an embankment, but the man's injuries did not appear too serious.
"I guess the cops came, kind of went over to him, it didn't seem that bad," Stafford said. "He was just kind of like laying down on that grass embankment, on the side of Southfield that's got the grass, and he was just kind of like laying there, and he seemed cool, and then the cops were kind of over there, and then all of a sudden this one cop just sprinted off. I don't know if he was going to call an ambulance ... It didn't look like - there was no blood, it wasn't that kind of a thing."
That man has since died, but no one else perished when the bridge came crashing onto the highway.
"It was kind of crazy just the fact that he was the only one that was injured," Stafford said. "That's pretty crazy no one was driving the way I was going or soon there behind him. It was pretty miraculous."
As police tended to the injured man, Stafford tried to figure out how he would get to practice. He called the team's head of security Elton Moore and asked Moore to send out a mass text instructing players and coaches to not take Southfield Freeway.
At first, Stafford was trying to see whether police, who had blocked off the small opening where cars going southbound could still squeeze under the bridge on the shoulder of the highway, would let him drive under it so he could get to practice.
"There were a few people that got through," Stafford said. "When I got up there, there were people going just one by one, probably didn't know what was going on, just going one by one underneath, and I was about to turn to go in, and I look up and it was [sirens flashing] ... cops behind me, so I just pulled over to let them go. I don't know what they're going to do, and they just ... shut me off, and I was like, 'And I'm stuck.'
"I don't think they were wanting people to keep driving [under the bridge]," Stafford added. "I walked underneath it, and it was kind of like, 'This thing could fall.'"
Moore, the Lions' head of security, had also been on his way to the team's facility in Allen Park, so he took a service drive to get close to where Stafford was waiting, and then Moore and Stafford swapped cars so the quarterback could get to work.
Stafford said getting to the facility around 6 a.m. is fairly normal for him and a few other players.
"[Dominic] Raiola's usually here, the other two quarterbacks usually are right around that time, Calvin [Johnson]'s in here pretty early usually," Stafford said. "There's a crew of about eight or 10 of us that are here pretty early."
Stafford had said at the beginning of the conversation that his encounter with the collapsed bridge was more dramatic than people were making it out to be, but he did seem taken aback by the whole experience.
"It shocked me, but it probably shocked some people that were right around it even more," Stafford said. "I didn't really know what I was looking at. You don't expect to see that when you're driving to work, but I'm sure there were people closer to it than I was."
Stafford said the response from teammates came mostly in the form of jokes about Stafford being fined for making the news for something other than football.
"It was $100. I'm sure it'll be more now - thank you," Stafford said with a smile. "They'll have to fight me to pay that one."
MORE: Driver Killed When Pedestrian Bridge Collapses Onto Southfield Freeway
