Four pops. Five years later, and Chris Bryant can still hear the sounds. It was the week before Michigan’s season opener against Alabama in the 2012 season opener at AT&T Stadium. According to Bryant, a redshirt freshman at the time, he was on the verge of starting at left guard after a heated competition throughout fall camp. His parents had even booked flights to Dallas and couldn’t stop talking about how fired up they were to see him play. “Three or four days” before kickoff, Bryant was participating in a routine offense-versus-defense drill. The running back made a cut. Someone fell on Bryant’s leg, and he heard the terrible noises — the sounds of a fractured tibia. It was the first serious injury of Bryant’s career. Instead of flying to Texas, his parents went to Ann Arbor to talk to doctors about the medical procedures their son would have to undergo. “It was very hurtful,” recalled Eric Bryant, Chris’s father. “You start focusing on how he’s feeling because I know it’s devastating for him more so than for myself or for my wife. But it’s a pain that you can’t really describe because you don’t want to show too much of that emotion to him because then that would only make him feel even worse.” Over the course of the next year, Bryant underwent an arduous rehabilitation process. His leg never healed the way he wanted it to. Still, he was able to work himself back onto the field, drawing a spot in the lineup against Minnesota on Oct. 5. His return didn’t last long. Just like the first catastrophic injury, Bryant can still describe the second in full detail. It was a routine double block. He had his own assignment and threw his arm out for an assist — where it got “completely thrown back.” “I just felt a bunch of tears,” Bryant said, “all through my shoulder.” He gritted his teeth and finished the game. In the following days, he tried desperately to tough it out, hiding his full symptoms from doctors, hoping he could play the next week at Penn State. “This was my opportunity,” Bryant said. “I sat out a whole year, not about to sit out another year.” But by the time the Wolverines had lost in triple overtime to the Nittany Lions, Bryant knew he had to get his shoulder looked at. The diagnosis? A torn rotator cuff, with damage to other ligaments and the rest of the shoulder. And at that point, Bryant had a big decision to make. Was continuing his playing career worth it? “Just came to a point where (you look) 20 years down the road,” Bryant said. “Do you want to be able to go outside in the backyard to throw a football with your kids?” One night, Bryant spoke to his mother, Joy, over the phone. His injuries had constantly bothered her and she told him as much. She also told him about an intuition that had come to her. “It was like I was dreaming, it was like God was shaking me, and I understood now, it was like a puzzle being put together,” Joy said. “It came to me, and that morning when I got up — we talk every morning — I said, ‘Christian, God spoke to me and told me for you to stop playing football, because he has a better plan for you. He told me to tell you to just give it up.’ “I said, ‘When you go to bed, you talk to God like you talk to me, and he’ll give you the answer.’ That night he did, and he said, ‘Okay, mom, I’m going to the coach and I’m going to let him know I’m taking a medical.’ ” Chris Bryant’s football career — what had led him to Ann Arbor in the first place — was over. “That’s what I’d been known for my whole life — as a football player,” Bryant, now Michigan’s director of high school relations, said. “To actually have to close that chapter and open up another one, it was tough. Took a while to get over it. “A lot of long nights just crying, man. It was just a hard feeling.” *** It took Bryant a “couple months” to deal with the end of his career. He met with famed sports psychologist Greg Harden. His parents reassured him that things would turn out okay and told him that he would find his true calling. Bryant’s relationship with Brady Hoke developed quickly as well, especially in the aftermath of his second injury. The head coach met with Bryant often, checking up on him regularly and prodding him to think about his options. Did he want to coach? Did he want to recruit? “Coach Hoke supported me the whole way,” Bryant said, “and sat me down until I found out what I wanted to do.” And it just so happened that one of Bryant’s best friends was in a “very, very similar situation.” Antonio Poole, a linebacker signed in the same class as Bryant, never played a snap due to two injuries — a torn pectoral and a ruptured Achilles tendon. The two were roommates freshman year. At the time, they couldn’t have known what they were in for. But their friendship only grew as the pair bonded over their shared misfortunes. “I was just like, ‘Damn, one of us gotta stay healthy, man,’ ” Poole said. “It was just funny, every time one of us got hurt, the other got hurt, and after that, we just bonded. It was just trying to keep each other’s spirits up, because coming there to play football and then things didn’t go the way we thought they would. We pushed each other through our rehab and continued to push each other and keep our spirits up after our football careers were over.” Poole was the first to hang up the cleats. After Bryant followed suit, Poole found himself giving advice. They talked about ways to cope. About life after football. About finding a new identity. Poole realized he couldn’t leave the game completely behind and became a recruiting assistant. Bryant was his first recruit. “Yeah, I remember I told (Bryant), that was one of the great ways to stay part of the team, just helping out,” Poole said. “He asked me, ‘How was it?’ I said, ‘At first, you’ll be Football Saturday, October 7, 2017 4 In end of a career, Bryant finds peace ORION SANG Daily Sports Editor COURTESY OF THE BRYANT FAMILY Chris Bryant saw limited playing time as an offensive lineman in Ann Arbor due to a laundry list of injuries, but found a new role in the Michigan program. I found a way, and I don’t know all the answers, but I know a way that I got here.