More than six months have passed since former Vero Beach High School football standout Zeke Motta underwent a second surgery to repair a fractured C1 vertebra in his neck, and he still doesn’t know if he’ll be able to resume his NFL career.
“He’s going through a series of evaluations with doctors from around the country, but he hasn’t been medically cleared to play yet,” said Motta’s father, Bill, an island resident who has coached the St. Edward’s School football team since 2010. “He’s very healthy, and he doesn’t really have any residual effects from the surgery that would hinder his every-day life.
“As far as playing football is concerned, however, that’s still up in the air,” he added. “What Zeke wants now is medical assurance that he won’t be at an increased risk if he plays with his usual reckless abandon. We don’t know if he’ll get that, so, right now, he has a 50-50 shot.
“But it’s something that’s completely out of his hands.”
Motta, a safety who earned All-America honors at Notre Dame before being selected by the Atlanta Falcons in the seventh round of the 2013 NFL Draft, played his way from special teams to the starting lineup as a rookie but missed the entire 2014 season.
Though the Mottas can’t pinpoint exactly when the neck fracture occurred, they believe the injury was sustained in a Dec. 8 game at Green Bay, where Motta was left dazed after a jarring hit while covering a second-quarter kickoff.
Motta made his first NFL start a week later and recorded five tackles in the Falcons’ one-point victory against Washington. He was expected to start again in the Dec. 23 game at San Francisco, but the pain in his neck worsened during the week’s practice and the team sent him for a CAT scan.
The scan revealed the fracture and, three days before Christmas 2013, a team of specialists at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta performed surgery to repair the damage, installing a plate at the front of the vertebrae.
Motta, 24, underwent a second surgery at the same hospital last July, when doctors inserted another plate at the back of the vertebrae and used a bone graft from his pelvis to fill a gap created when the neck didn’t heal as expected from the initial operation.
“He went through his season-ending exit interview with the Falcons and they’re expecting him to return for their mini-camp in March,” Bill Motta said. “He’s still up in Atlanta, following their protocol and going through all the evaluations.
“He’s hoping to be cleared before March so he can test it out, but he needs medical clearance — and he might not get it.”
