Frank Bellinger was cheering on his son alongside a bunch of Giants fans he had just met at a Las Vegas casino sports bar when the fear set in.
Giants tight end Daniel Bellinger completed a 13-yard reception, rolled onto his back, put two hands inside his facemask and pulled away a bloody glove. He left the field on a cart, with red splotches on his jersey and no helmet to hide his swollen left eye.
“I was scared that his loss of sight would impact his normal activities of daily living much [more than] ‘Is his career going to be over?’ ” the elder Bellinger said. “But that didn’t last long.”
Within minutes, while the Oct. 23 game was at halftime, Frank’s phone rang with an update from the Giants. The helpless feeling of being 2,200 miles away from the gruesome eye poke in Jacksonville, Fla., lessened as he learned his son was on the way to a local emergency room. He tried to focus on the rest of the game, but nerves didn’t settle until word came that Daniel suffered a fracture around the eye socket and could fly home with the team — not ride 14 hours in a car service, as was Plan B.
“I was really impressed with how quickly the Giants were on the phone updating us,” Frank said. “It felt like he was in the best hands.”
A new-look helmet-visor-wearing Bellinger tied his season high with five catches Sunday in a 20-20 tie against the Commanders, six weeks (four games missed) after he was first injured.
“The visor was kind of like wearing sunglasses,” Bellinger said. “It helped me block the sun a little bit, but didn’t impair the vision too much, which is what I was worried about. Definitely getting adjusted to it still, with the sweat and fogginess.”
Unlike most players returning from the sidelines, Bellinger wasn’t eased into the lineup on a pitch count, partly because his freak injury isn’t as susceptible to aggravation as a muscle strain and partly because the Giants’ tight end depth is so thin.
“I knew going in that I was going to play a lot, and I was comfortable with it,” Bellinger said after logging 64 of a potential 66 offensive snaps. “Originally, I thought going in I might be hesitant thinking about the eye and stuff, but it wasn’t like that at all. I felt confident — didn’t really think about it all.”
Returning from stomach-turning injuries is in Bellinger’s DNA. He dislocated his hip during a high school football practice.
“Some of the freshmen players were throwing up on the field seeing it,” Frank recalled. “But it was inspiring and probably the most amazing thing I’ve seen him do to come back this time and play that much for the Giants right away. He looked comfortable — like he didn’t miss a beat — catching the ball.”
Bellinger experienced a bout of double-vision during his layoff, which doctors assured him was a normal symptom and would clear up within six weeks. One of his first hospital visitors, hours after undergoing surgery on Oct. 28, was quarterback Daniel Jones.
“He certainly has some productivity we’re encouraged by,” tight ends coach Andy Bischoff said. “He came along in great strides. He is smart, he is dependable and he’s shown great toughness. He’s what we want.”
When Frank’s emotions switched to anger and he openly questioned whether it was a dirty play, Giants general manager Joe Schoen personally called to assure that nothing suggested that was the case.
The tight end never felt the same way his father did and appreciated Jaguars linebacker Devin Lloyd’s apology through social media. Bellinger relied on his girlfriend and mother, both of whom came to New Jersey to stay with him, to make his meals or perform other routine tasks that served as a reminder his wasn’t the typical football injury.
“I couldn’t drive with one eye,” he said, “so they helped run errands for me.”
Bellinger couldn’t practice until last week and other forms of conditioning proved tricky, too.
“That was a lot of stuff that we couldn’t do with my eye just because of the pressure of weight lifting and we weren’t sure about the bleeding inside the eye when I first started getting back,” he said. “We took a slow approach at first, but then we started ramping it up once it was safe.”
All the while “he took no mental vacation,” Bischoff said. It showed.
“As a rookie, I still have a lot of stuff to learn and improve on,” Bellinger said. “Trying to be a leader in the future on this team, it’s going to take a big role that even when I am out on injury to help my other tight ends any way I can. Reading defenses and seeing how [they] adjust to our different tight end personnel, being locked in mentally was the biggest part of the ‘four-week bye’ for me.”