Look at this picture. Chris Bober's wife Jennifer thought it was scary when she took it back in 2002. Bober's New York Giants teammates actually thought it was cool, that he played football with this purple-and-blue badge of honor that extended from his armpit to his wrist. At first, the doctor told him his left biceps was completely torn and detached from the bone. Then he was re-diagnosed and it turned out the biceps was only about halfway torn. It happened in November that season, against the Washington Redskins, when Bober, a center, was battling Dan Wilkinson, a 340-pound hulk of a man nicknamed "Big Daddy."
Bober played much of the game with one arm. It actually hurt the least when he was on the field and the adrenalin was pumping. He didn't have time to think about it. He did not tell the trainers that he was ailing. He knew they'd take him out of the game. When he got to the locker room, the appendage was so swollen that the armhole of his jersey had to be cut so he could undress.
"It was my first year as a starter," Bober says. "I'd fought so hard to become a starter. There wasn't any way I was going to give anyone an opportunity to play in front of me. That's the story of this league. We're so afraid someone's going to replace us and we're going to be forgotten."
Bober, who's retired now, was impressed but not surprised as he sat in front of a television two weeks ago and watched Pro Bowl defensive backs Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas play through significant injuries in Seattle's 28-22 overtime victory over Green Bay. Sherman stayed in the game despite torn ligaments in his elbow, and Thomas played through a dislocated shoulder.
The Seahawks were inspired by their unwillingness to leave the field and their teammates. Backup cornerback Tharold Simon said he was summoned on the sideline to replace Sherman, but that Sherman repeatedly told coach Pete Carroll, "I'm good. I'll play through it."
He was injured when he collided with teammate Kam Chancellor, who's known as the hardest hitter in the NFL. Sherman could be seen wincing on television in between plays after the hit, and holding his left arm as if it were in an invisible sling.
Words like "warriors" and other macho talk were used repeatedly in the days after the game. On Thursday, Chancellor said, "Pain is temporary." Both Sherman and Thomas practiced Friday, and are expected to play in Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday against the New England Patriots.
Dr. Luga Podesta, a sports medicine specialist at Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic clinic in Los Angeles, says torn elbow ligaments are "very painful," especially when a player is trying to tackle or strip the ball. But Sherman's mentality is typical for NFL players, especially in the postseason. "The closer they get to the playoffs and a game like this, nobody will talk about injuries," says Podesta, who has a long history of working with professional teams. "And they'll play with anything. If they can walk, they'll play.
"And there's a lot of peer pressure. Football is a sport [where] every player is getting banged. You're going to hurt with every play, one way or another. But these guys can take a lot. If you've been on an NFL sideline, it's so fast and so violent it's amazing that [there aren't] more injuries."
The Super Bowl has seen its share of athletes playing hurt, with the most famous incident happening in 1980, when Los Angeles Rams' defensive end Jack Youngblood played with a fractured fibula during Super Bowl XIV. The culture of injuries has changed quite a bit since then, Podesta says, because of concussions and agent intervention and the millions of dollars at stake.
Still, the league is full of stories such as Sherman's and Thomas' and Aaron Rodgers playing with a partially torn calf. ESPN.com asked members of the Seahawks and Patriots about the worst injuries they've ever played with during their careers. While some players avoided the question -- talking about injuries is taboo in the NFL -- others opened up about the lengths they've taken to stay in a game.
Linemen generally have the best stories. Because their jobs don't require sprinting and cutting, they can play with more sprains and even broken bones.
Seahawks center Max Unger says that in 2010, he tore the plantar plate on the bottom of his foot sometime early in the third quarter against San Francisco but played the rest of the game. He was in extreme pain and couldn't concentrate. Seattle was winning the game handily, and at one point he looked up and asked himself, "Why are we passing the ball so much?" He thought it was late in the fourth quarter; it was only the third.
"And I was like, 'Oh, God, I'm not going to make it,'" he says.
He did, but was put on injured reserve for the rest of the season.
"I have to apologize to all the trainers," Unger says. "Because I'm like cussing them out whenever I'm hurt. I should be thanking them, but I'm just, like, yelling expletives constantly at them and just being a pain in the ass to deal with."
Patriots running back Shane Vereen played with a broken left wrist in the 2013 season opener against Buffalo. On a pain scale between 1 to 10, Vereen said his was about 27. He remembered what his mom used to tell him when he was a kid, that football is a game that you play hurt but you never play injured. Fear kept him in the game more than anything.
"I kept playing," Vereen says, "because I was scared to go to coach [Bill Belichick] and say, 'Take me out. My wrist hurts.'"
Tharold Simon says he's playing with a dislocated finger and a swollen knee from surgery he had in early September to repair a torn meniscus.
"I guess it's really about how much you can take," Simon says. "Certain people are built a different way. I've played with a lot of pain in my career. It's just something you deal with mentally."
Drew Nowak, a Seahawks guard who's on the practice squad, says he played with a broken leg during his high school days in Wisconsin. He thought it was a high ankle sprain at first, but as the game progressed he figured it was something more serious. He went to the sideline, and told the trainer, "Do whatever you have to do." He says his leg was braced by two pieces of something that he said may or may not have been wood, then wrapped in tape.
"You never want to give up your spot," he says. "I was trying to be tough. I didn't want to be soft."
X-rays the next day revealed the stress fracture; he was out for the season. Six weeks later, though, he was playing hockey.
In hindsight, Nowak thinks he would've handled the injury differently if it happened today.
"It wasn't smart at all," he says. "Not one bit."