Kansas City Chiefs guard Nick Allegretti won his third ring against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII, and if there was a trophy for being tough as nails, he probably would win that, too.
Allegretti recently revealed he played through a torn ulnar collateral ligament in the Chiefs’ 25—22 win on Feb. 11, a fact made even more impressive considering how well the fifth-year veteran performed despite serious injury.
In an interview on The Jim Rome Show, Allegretti said he suffered the elbow injury at the end of the second quarter while blocking 49ers pass-rusher Nick Bosa.
“I haven’t suffered an injury like that until then,” Allegretti said Friday. “I immediately knew. It was something that you heard a pop, you felt it, and knowing minimal about anatomy, knew that something was wrong in my elbow—because my elbow is not supposed to bend that way. Fortunately, we had the two-minute warning, and I had a couple seconds to gather myself, figure out that my arm still bent, and I was able to go.”
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Allegretti, who stepped up in the postseason after first-team All-Pro selection Joe Thuney suffered a pectoral injury in the divisional round, played 79 offensive snaps in Super Bowl LVIII. The 2019 seventh-round pick out of Illinois allowed just four pressures all game and didn’t allow any in overtime.
When Allegretti was asked about the level of pain he was experiencing, he said it was “probably in the six or seven [range]” immediately after the tear, but it became more manageable after halftime, when the Chiefs’ medical staff put a brace on his arm.
“One of our backup offensive lineman, he has a masters in biology and he wanted to go be a doctor when he was done,” continued Allegretti. “He told me, ‘Listen, you don’t need a UCL to play offensive line.’ I was like, ‘All right, I don’t know what that means, but I don’t need it. I’m good.’ So I was able to go.”
Allegretti and the rest of the Chiefs’ offensive line ended up giving Patrick Mahomes enough protection to win a nail-biting overtime thriller. Among all the details to account for in the Chiefs’ dynasty folklore, Allegretti’s tenacious battle through injury deserves to be included, too, right up there with Mahomes’s clutch drives and Marquez Valdes-Scantling's redemption arc.
