Pat Shurmur was standing right there and he felt the pain.
The Giants coach was just feet away when Teddy Bridgewater suffered a gruesome injury at training camp in 2016, dislocating his left knee joint and tearing his ACL. The two were both with the Vikings then, and Bridgewater hardly knew if his career was going to continue.
But after two years, the 25-year-old picked up with the Jets this summer and has impressed early on. He will continue to make his case when he faces his old offensive coordinator, Shurmur, as the Giants play the Jets on Friday night at MetLife Stadium in the third preseason game for each team.
“I was standing just a few feet from him when he had his injury and it was a very tough deal,” Shurmur said after training camp Sunday. “It went from worrying about whether [Bridgewater] was going to be able to walk again to now he’s out there playing. I’m certainly very happy for Teddy.”
Shurmur didn’t seem enamored of the idea of talking about a player on another team, but he also couldn’t help but gush about the time he spent with Bridgewater. Coming out of Louisville, Bridgewater was taken with the 32nd pick in the 2014 draft — with the Vikings trading up to get him with the final pick of the first round — and was the starter in Minnesota early into his rookie year.
He was thought of as one of the bright young quarterbacks in the league, throwing for 3,231 yards in 2015 to go along with 14 touchdowns. With the versatility to get out of the pocket and make plays, he was difficult to defend. But the injury derailed his career, which he is just now trying to get back on track.
“Teddy is an outstanding, competitive guy and he’s got a unique charisma,” Shurmur said. “When I was there with him, the whole area loved Teddy. He just had that way about him, and then when he got injured everyone was pulling for him to come back. I’m thrilled for whatever success he’s having. I did peek at their game and it appears to me like he’s playing pretty well.”
Of course, the Jets drafted Sam Darnold out of USC with the No. 3-overall selection this year with the hope that he can take over as their franchise quarterback, and that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Shurmur, either.
“He had some of the same traits that Teddy has,” Shurmur said of Darnold. “Very charismatic, he has that winning presence about him and you can see being with him on campus at USC that the players really kind of came to him. He had that, and he was obviously highly successful as a quarterback.”
The Jets also have veteran Josh McCown, making for quite a competition to determine who will be under center when the season starts.
But at this point in preseason, Shurmur remains focused on his own team. Then Giants are coming off a 30-17 win over the Lions in Detroit on Friday, and Shurmur gave his team off Saturday to rest and recuperate. After the Jets game, they wrap up the preseason against the Patriots on Aug. 30 before the regular-season opener against the Jaguars on Sept. 9.
Coming off a three-win season that resulted in general manger Jerry Reese and coach Ben McAdoo being fired, there is some pressure on Shurmur to turn this thing around quickly.
“We’re playing the Jets here at the end of the week, but this is still training camp, so we’ll come out in pads the next couple of days and get some stuff done,” Shurmur said, “not only for the Jets but also thinking ahead to Jacksonville.”
On the way, Shurmur will see an old friend in Bridgewater, and he might just turn out to be the starting quarterback for the other team in New York by the time the season starts.
“The only thing I would say is don’t sleep on Teddy,” Shurmur said, “because I think he’s got it in him.”
