In 2013, Washington safety Brandon Meriweather delivered what many called frontier justice, concussing Green Bay Packers running back Eddie Lacy with a helmet-to-helmet hit. Moments later, he suffered a concussion himself while attempting a similar punishment on another Packers player. As ugly as it was, this kind of frontier justice wasn’t new. It had been around for decades, and even former NFL player Mark Schlereth has taken his share of it.

“I can remember more than a couple of times where we threw an interception in a game, and that was always frightening because I’m holding somebody on every play,” he confessed on The Rich Eisen Show. “So, every single play, somebody is pissed at me.

“I once had two guys that knocked my a– over. Bruce Smith hit me on an interception so hard in Buffalo once that my feet were off the ground. He hit me so hard my head snapped back, and snot shot out of both nostrils.”

Schlereth got back up and acted like it didn’t hurt, but in reality, he was seeing stars. 

Unfortunately, he didn’t reveal which game the incident took place in.

“My offensive line coach, Alice Gibbs, thought Bruce Smith was the best defensive player ever. When he used to rate players, he would put Bruce Smith one notch above or one notch below Jesus.”

But, further talking about frontier justice that many players love to dish out, Schlereth revealed that Leslie O’Neal, too, gave him a painful hit. 

All that punishment and strain on his body meant he was keeping orthopedists busy around the clock. Reports suggest Schlereth endured 20 knee surgeries and 29 operations in total during his 12-year NFL career.

By 1999, he was constantly in pain and knew his career was about to end. Not surprising that 2000 was the last season he played in the NFL. He chose to retire, leaving behind an era where he was the poster boy for mangled limbs and joints.

Operation Mark Schlereth

In a sport like football, where 300-pound bodies crash into each other at full speed, getting hit and healing is the norm. Think about Joe Theismann’s grotesquely broken leg. No wonder Schlereth was always in the hospital.

The operations kept happening. Even when the player was in college. And during the latter part of his NFL career, the time when he was with the Broncos, he would be on the injury list almost every week. His name was always next to the letter ‘P’ for probable, and with ‘D’ when definite would be appropriate.

Sometimes, he would even risk it all and play, only to walk with a limp the rest of the week. But he would always find a way to line up on Sunday.

But why did he do that? Answering that question in 1998, he explained that it was out of sheer love for the sport. “It’s important to me to play injured and play well in these conditions,” he explained. In fact, he would even time his surgeries such that he could miss the least amount of games possible. For instance, in 1998, he was supposed to have an arthroscopic knee surgery—the 12th procedure on his left knee. He timed it for a bye week so that he wouldn’t have to miss a game.

That’s some serious dedication. A hit from Bruce Smith would barely be enough to derail him, would it?