Miles Austin starts anew after frightening kidney injury

Even after he noticed the blood in his urine, Miles Austin didn't consider that he might have played the last football game of his life.

This was Nov. 30 in Orchard Park, N.Y., against the Buffalo Bills. Austin was playing for the Cleveland Browns, and he had caught a pass from Johnny Manziel - the first completion of Manziel's career - and turned up the field toward the left sideline. He tried to hurdle a defensive player, and when Austin landed on the ground, another Bills player landed on top of him.

He didn't sense much pain in that instant, but after the Browns' 26-10 loss, his abdomen began to ache, as if he were having an episode of agita. It didn't bother him much. He got dressed. He conducted a few postgame interviews. Then he stood at a urinal and saw the rich red stream.

"It was definitely something that will wake you up," Austin said Tuesday after the Eagles finished practice during their organized team activities. "I remember somebody on my team saying, 'You going to tell somebody?' I was like, 'Absolutely I'm going to tell somebody.' "

The Eagles signed Austin in March to a one-year contract for $1 million in guaranteed money, and one of the reasons that he was available was that injury to his kidney.

He'd been a terrific receiver at times over his eight seasons with the Dallas Cowboys - two seasons of more than 1,000 receiving yards, three with at least 66 catches - and he'd put up decent numbers with the Browns, too: 47 catches, 568 yards, a couple of touchdowns in 12 games. But Austin had missed 11 games in 2011 and 2013 with a succession of hamstring problems, and he will turn 31 later this month, and Chip Kelly might have been the only coach or GM in the NFL willing to guarantee $1 million to a wide receiver of that age with that recent track record, especially after a kidney injury. That's not what happens in the NFL - not very often, anyway.

Let's be precise here: Austin had a laceration of the kidney. In most news reports, though, it was described in those two generic words: kidney injury. That is what happens in the NFL: You get tackled on an ordinary play in an ordinary game, and you spend the next 31/2 days in a Buffalo hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, eating nothing, drinking as much water as you can, watching your urine get lighter and pinker after you've had the water and get darker and redder again after you've slept, making sure not to exert yourself around the house for the subsequent three days because the kidney needs a little more time to heal, knowing that you'll be a free agent come the offseason, wondering what your future in football might be, and all of that personal and professional upheaval gets wrapped up in that quick and convenient little term, kidney injury.

Austin said he thought a lot over that time, and after. What he didn't think about was retirement.

"It was nothing where I was really like, 'Man, I think I'm done playing,' " he said. "But it was definitely a thought like, 'Man, this is something I've got to overcome, just like other things I've had to overcome.' It's just another chapter to life."

Is there a difference for a football player, he was asked, between the types of injuries he had suffered? A pulled hamstring is one thing. A lacerated kidney is another. It just . . . feels . . . more severe.

"It's similar. It's frustration, regardless," he said. "One's obviously a lot more dangerous in your life, potentially, down the road. The other is more immediate and less dangerous. But it's a similar feeling regardless of any injury or setback. It's frustration, but then you have to overcome it.

"Like anything, you have to figure out, 'What can I do right now? Where am I right now? What's the best thing I can do to get out of this situation?' Proactive thinking, you know what I'm saying? Rather than the opposite."

Six weeks after he checked out of the hospital, Austin was cleared to begin working out again. Of course, at the time of the Buffalo game, the Browns had just four weeks left in their season. They declined to re-sign him. Kelly and the Eagles saw something there. It has been suggested they might use Austin on special teams, although he hasn't returned a kickoff since 2009.

"If they ask me to come out here with the lawn mower and mow this field," he said, "that's what I've got to do." It can't be that bad, compared with a kidney injury.

@MikeSielski