National Football League: Kansas City Chiefs
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. As senior assistant to the head coach for the Chiefs, Porter Ellett might as well be Andy Reids shadow. Maybe youve seen him nearby during practice or games and wondered about the guy Reid is apt to call his left-hand man.
The joke reflects the nature of their relationship, a little-known aspect of Reids own life and what makes Ellett who he is: a man who had his right arm amputated as a teen, believes hes better off for it and is distinguished most by his intelligence, zeal for life and sense of humor.
Its those personal traits that resonate with an admiring Reid, who calls Ellett quite a person, and make Ellett well-suited for his second year orbiting a coach whose brother Reggie has long-contended with an injury of a similar nature.
If Ellett doesnt quite bunk with Reid at training camp, hes alongside virtually every waking moment to attend to … whatever: from the clerical stuff of building playbooks and call sheets to Reids administrative work to miscellaneous projects behind the scenes.
I can be rough on you a little bit in that position; hes got a tremendous amount of responsibility, Reid said. And so when the best of my red hairs get to me, he handles it and smooths it out and just kind of calms the storm.
Its grinding work but an incredible opportunity to absorb the profession. Previously in the same capacity, Reid employed current Chiefs general manager Brett Veach and Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott; Ellett has playfully jousted with each about who has performed better, and he could follow in either direction.
Theres no way to know if his future holds those sorts of high-profile positions, but his presence here is momentous in itself: Its testament to a special spirit forged when Ellett was 4 years old and might well have died in the accident on the family farm in Loa, Utah.
It would have been challenge enough to land this NFL job with enormous growth potential coming from a remote rural town of about 600 and a high school that didnt have enough kids for a football team.
Making it with one arm was something else entirely, something that speaks to intense resolve and how his family navigated the aftermath of the mishap that day: In the back of a Ford F-150 with older kids after moving sheep to the summer range, Ellett crawled up on a motorcycle in the bed and was thrown out when the truck hit a bump.
His skull was cracked and his head scalped, as he put it. That wasnt the worst of it. Extreme nerve damage, known as a brachial plexus injury, was inflicted on his right arm, rendering it what he calls dead and ultimately compelling him to have it amputated when he was 16.
By then, though, he had long since come to terms with his arm. So a day after the amputation, still bleeding some, he played pickup basketball.
It was kind of like when you get new cleats, or a new ball, he said. Lets try this out, lets see what this is like.
That mindset reflected both his innate attitude and how his parents reacted to the trauma of the accident. His mother, Mary, remembers counting her blessings that he was simply alive with no brain damage, and they set about living what happens to be one of Reids mantras: roll with it.
They taught me, Its up to you, Ellett said. There was no victim mentality ever. This is a super-bad pun, but its the hand life deals you, so you do what you can with it.
Painful as it was for them, that meant letting him struggle to find his way at times.
