‘You only get one life:’ The Juice Scruggs vantage point

He knows he should've died that day in April 2019. Now, his Houston Texans are in the playoff race.

Dec 29, 2023

Here are words you’ll never see plastered in all caps on a highway billboard: Do Not Wear Your Seat Belt.

Obviously, we’ve all been trained to immediately buckle up inside a vehicle. A positive evolutionary step in our species. The government even uses our tax dollars to remind us: Click it or Ticket. Yet, honestly, seat belts have never been Juice Scruggs’ thing. The Houston Texans’ rookie guard admits he’s never had this instinct upon entering a car. The only time he’d put his seat belt on — far back as he remembers — was if someone else in the car made him.

This bad habit is the reason he’s alive, too.

Back in college, Scruggs was driving north on I-79 in Pennsylvania and hit black ice. When his vehicle then careened off the road, his (massive) body was ejected through the driver’s side window. He survived. The car was destroyed. The doctor told him that not wearing a seat belt saved his life.

“Because,” he adds, “the car looked horrible.”

Scruggs knows how absurd this all sounds, but it’s true.

“It’s definitely crazy.”

With two games to go, the Texans are actually in prime position to make the AFC postseason.

Equally illogical, even with 44 percent of teams now making the tournament. Everyone assumed these Texans were in the infancy of a three-year plan with new head coach DeMeco Ryans. Now? Their chances of making the playoffs jump to 53 percent with a win over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, per the New York Times’ playoff simulator. And if they also beat the Indianapolis Colts in the regular-season finale? They’re in at 10-7. Considering rookie wunderkind C.J. Stroud is back from a concussion, hope should be in high supply. In this wacky conference, anything is possible.

The Texans are a lot easier to understand through the life of Scruggs, drafted 62nd overall in the second round out of Penn State last April.

That car accident in April 2019 could’ve — honestly, should have — ended his life. Instead, he merely broke his back and was offered a new lease on life. Perspective that immediately guided Scruggs through a strenuous rehab, an illustrious collegiate career, right to this opportunity this first season in the NFL. That’s not all. He also has an older brother who’s paralyzed from the waist down. It’s never easy for teams to know how any players will respond this time of year. Seasons are on the line this weekend. Certainly, though, Ryans and GM Nick Caserio understood they were investing in Scruggs, the person, as much as the player. After missing nearly three months of the season due to a hamstring injury, Scruggs has settled in at left guard.

It doesn’t take the 6-foot-3, 308-pounder long to pinpoint exactly what makes him different from other offensive linemen.

“My resiliency,” he says. “When you look on the field, I’m just a resilient player. If I have a bad play, I’m onto the next play. If I have a good play, I’m onto the next play.”

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He’s the baby of the family, the youngest of four boys from Ashtabula, Ohio. As a result, growing up, Scruggs took “a lot of losses” and “a lot of beatings” and it all hardened him as a young athlete. He moved to Erie, Pa., for his freshman year of high school at Cathedral Prep and that’s when he really started taking football seriously. Soon, Scruggs was receiving scholarship offers from schools across the country. Penn State was the choice because of James Franklin.

Like so many linemen in the Big Ten, he spent Year 1 beefing up. And then right after that redshirt year — before spring ball — Scruggs visited his girlfriend in Slippery Rock, Pa., on spring break. He was about halfway through the 81-mile trek north back to Erie, near Meadville, when his car began to sway. Never before had Scruggs experienced black ice. He wasn’t driving fast and wasn’t driving recklessly. As he recalls, Scruggs was actually driving under the 70 mph speed limit. As soon as the four wheels started sliding, he lost all control and made the common mistake of trying to regain control by jerking the wheel to get back onto the road. (“A horrible decision on my part,” he says.) Everything happened so fast, but he does remember the car flipping and flipping.

He does remember hitting a ditch and being flown through the driver’s side window.

He was airborne.

“And the next thing you know,” Scruggs says, “I woke up and I was in the hospital.”

Scruggs was found by emergency workers unconscious. He was taken to the local hospital in Meadville and eventually transported to Erie. His girlfriend knew something was wrong while tracking his location on her iPhone — suddenly Scruggs was off the road. She panicked and spread the news. Dad drove in from Ohio. Mom flew in from Atlanta. The physics of this all made no sense. Scruggs was 285 pounds then, yet somehow managed to fly through a window. His body was found 15 feet from the car and… about that car. That tiny car. It wasn’t even his. Scruggs was borrowing a friend’s two-door Pontiac — a “super small car.”

He doesn’t think he would’ve been able to climb through the open window if he tried.

The car kept tumbling and tumbling and, he thinks, smashed into a tree. When Scruggs woke up he was surrounded by family, his girlfriend and two Nittany Lion teammates (Journey Brown and Evan Presta). They filled Scruggs in on the damage done. He had fractured the L3 vertebrae in his spine, in addition to the litany of bruises. One bruise on his left leg was particularly grisly. Whereas most are purple, this bruise was pure black.

But he was alive.

The doctor gave him two choices. Scruggs could undergo surgery to fix this, which might’ve ended his football career. It’d be difficult to play such a violent game with screws in his back. Or he could wear a brace for 12 months, one that strapped around his back and kept his sternum upright at all times.

The choice was easy. He’d wear a brace.

Bruises went away in two months. Scratches faded. He never worried at all about future damage to his back after such a catastrophic injury.

“When they told me a chance of no football,” he says, “I was like, ‘Yeah, no. Give me the other option.’”

Rehab tested Juice Scruggs’ patience. This brace sure was annoying.

He uses one word to sum up the first three months: “Rough.” Simply walking was painful, so he traveled around the Happy Valley campus on a scooter. Over time, however, his back healed on its own. By the four-month mark, Scruggs started to lift weights. Nothing too crazy — he’d need to sit down. But someone would hand Scruggs dumbbells and he’d rip through sets of curls, shoulder press, anything that wouldn’t risk tweaking his back. Scruggs lived in the training room with multiple treatments each day.

And he waited. When it comes to rehab involving bones, that’s all a player can do.

As much as he hated that brace, it aligned his spine in a way to expediate the healing process. His posture was perfect at all times. To pass the time those 11, 12 months in a brace, Scruggs honed his NBA2K game. Online, he’d create his own player. At school, he worked toward his degree in hospitality management. One day, he’d love to open up a restaurant or get into the hotel business.

This near-death experience was always bigger than football. Scruggs grew to appreciate life like never before.

“It definitely made me sit back and realize you only get one life,” he says, “and it’s precious and you just got to take advantage of the opportunities you have.”

Obviously, he sat down the entire 2019 season at Penn State. Pain was up and down. Some days better than others. But by the time Penn State was preparing for its bowl game that December, trainers noticed that his spine was healing. The following winter workouts, he was ready to go. The brace came off and he ramped up his workload. This 2020 college season was shortened due to Covid. No, fans were not yet filling the 106,572-seat Beaver Stadium. Nor was Penn State very good this season. Nor was there any easing back in. His first reps came with Penn State backed up against its own goal line. But this first game back — a 35-19 loss to Maryland on Nov. 7, 2020 — was an emotional experience.

This was Scruggs’ first time taking the field since his final high school game in 2017.

A span of 1,066 days.

“Getting back on the field felt amazing,” Scruggs says, “All the work that I was putting in felt worth it. We were getting destroyed by Maryland that game. Losing is never fun. But besides that, it was amazing just being back on the field competing against other teams. Because in practice, you’re going against the guys you always see. It gets old. Finally being back out there competing against the other team. An amazing feeling. I was like, ‘Yeah, all that work was worth it.’”

The NFL was always Scruggs’ end goal, but he never forgot something Franklin stressed to the entire team his freshman year: “Don’t focus on the result. Enjoy the process. Because the process is going to get you the result.” After seeing time as a backup in 2020, he started nine games at right guard and four at center in 2021 and then all 13 games at center in 2022 on the Nittany Lions’ 10-2 Rose Bowl-winning squad. Scruggs built himself into one of the top offensive lineman prospects in the country. There were no lingering effects from the car accident, either. His would tighten up occasionally but, heck, that was the case for anyone in the sport.

Once the Texans called him on April 28, emotions struck Scruggs all at once. His heart started beating fast. He always felt his adrenaline race during games, but this? This was “10 times more” than anything he had ever experienced on the field. This was more of a palpable “thumping.” Caserio informed Scruggs that the Texans were selecting him with their second-round pick and the big man broke down in tears. Cried like he hadn’t cried in years.

Adds Scruggs: “It was just unreal. A day I’ll always remember, always cherish.”

Another reason he was so emotional was that this car crash wasn’t the only traumatic experience in his life. Scruggs also draws eternal perspective from his brother. What Brendan Hester experienced two years prior to the crash — on June 2, 2017 — had more grave consequences.

That day, Hester was shot by Ashtabula (Ohio) police officers during a reported home invasion, the Star Beacon reported. Hester claimed that he was misidentified by police and took those two bullets (including one in the back) while trying to restrain the assailant. He nearly died himself, suffering strokes and collapsed lungs and remaining in critical condition for months. Hester is now permanently paralyzed.

Scruggs does not want to get into the details of that day. There’s clearly a lot he’d like to share, but knows it’s his brother’s story to tell in full.

His brother’s life changed forever.

This tragedy rocked the entire family.

“Going through what I went through with my back and the accident and everything,” Scruggs says, “I could have said, ‘Why me?’ But I would just always think about what my brother was going through. He’s paralyzed. He can’t walk. I know he’d do anything to walk again. And I would always think about him whenever I would get down on myself. I think about what he’s going through and it always gets me back on track. Back on the right mindset.”

Scruggs was at his brother’s side in the hospital for a full month after the shooting and dedicated his final year of high school football to him.

He’d also get a tattoo in his honor: “Hess Strong” is inscribed across his right forearm.

Hester filed a civil suit against the officers and the city of Ashtabula, the newspaper reported, and received compensation in a 2019 out of court settlement.

All four brothers remain close to this day and Brendan, he says, is “doing great.” He bought his own house two years ago in Cleveland. While aides do provide some assistance, Scruggs says he’s able to pretty much do everything on his own. He enjoys spending time outside on his patio and spending time with family. Even though they’re six years apart, Scruggs believes he and Brendan are “exactly alike:” chill, laidback, friendly to be around. Every time they speak, every time they meet, Scruggs’ is reminded that life itself is precious.

So, he plays to through the echo of every whistle.

His resilience is drawn most from his brother’s resilience.

“He’s definitely my why,” Scruggs says. “That’s definitely why I do what I do, why I play the way I play.”

All of this, he knows, prepared him for everything the NFL could possibly throw at him. Juice Scruggs didn’t even experience his first regular-season action until the Texans’ Nov. 26 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was forced to wait in a trainer’s room yet again. But his timing’s impeccable. Houston is now right in the thick of the AFC playoff logjam.

Scruggs had a strong suspicion last summer that these Texans could compete for a playoff spot. This was a group clearly building something special from the ground up under Ryans and Stroud’s intellect stood out immediately. Scruggs would ask the rookie quarterback questions all the time about the ins and outs of the offense and Stroud almost always had the answer.

Through 11-on-11 work, once the ball was snapped, Stroud barely made any mistakes.

“He installed the offense,” Scruggs adds, “so there’s a reason why he’s a No. 2 overall pick.”

Good luck making sense of this AFC. These Texans suffered gruesome losses to the New York Jets (30-6), Cleveland Browns (36-22), while also losing breakout wideout Tank Dell for the season with a broken fibula. But now Stroud’s back, and he’s got another rising star in Nico Collins to find downfield. Battling injuries of his own, Collins has 64 receptions for 1,022 yards with seven touchdowns this season. He wasn’t shy in our chat earlier this season. Whether it’s stuffing interior pressure to give Stroud time or paving the way for running back Devin Singletary on the ground, the Texans will also be counting on Scruggs these final two games.

“With our offense and how we operate,” Ryans said at his presser this week, “it goes back to executing. It starts up front executing and it starts with the run game. If we can get the run game going, it helps whoever is under center. That’s shown when we’ve played well on offense, we’ve ran the ball well. I truly believe that if we’re running the ball well, that helps us all.”

Scruggs believes he’s always been here for that reason, too.

From the selection of Stroud at No. 2 overall, to the bold trade up for Will Anderson Jr. at No. 3 overall, to the string of veteran additions, the Texans signaled to everyone that they intended to win this 2023 season. This was a franchise on pause through 2021 and 2022. With one aggressive offseason, Houston accelerated its rebuild faster than anyone expected. Scruggs loved this team’s mindset as early as OTAs. Here, he thinks back to all of the first impressions with teammates.

“Everybody’s working,” he says. “Everybody’s just working like they’re hungry. You can just see it. And I think our rookie class, we got a good rookie class and we just came in, we left our egos at the door. We didn’t come in cocky and we just came in ready to work and learn from the older guys, the vets.”

For better or worse, no, Juice Scruggs never relives that car accident in his mind. He’s been on I-79 plenty of times since propelling through that car window, and he doesn’t like dwelling on the past about anything.

He chooses to live in the present, the greatest lesson he took from nearly dying that day in 2019.

“Live in the present,” he says, “and be thankful that you have another day to live your life.”

That, and one more thing.

He doesn’t plan on buckling his seat belt any time soon.

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