Nate Burleson breaks arm in car accident saving falling pizza

We don’t like to make fun of people who get injured, but we still have not stopped laughing at the fact that Nate Burleson broke his arm trying to save pizza from falling off the passenger seat of his car. Burleson is back in action and caught a TD today... something he celebrated by showing the arm he broke:

It woulda been better if he just munched down on some imaginary ‘za, but we’ll take this.

Burleson appears to be fully healthy. He returned to practice on a limited basis after the Lions’ Week 9 bye and has worked with the first-team offense throughout the week. Burleson himself seems relieved to be back. Via the Free Press:

That fateful pizza caused a single vehicle accident back in September. Burleson was driving home after watching Monday Night Football with teammates, and had purchased two whole pizzas and stacked them next to him on the passenger seat. He took his eyes off the road to catch the top box as it began sliding toward the floor, then looked up to see an oncoming car. Burleson swerved and hit a median, breaking his left arm in the process. No alcohol was involved, just concern for cheesy, saucy baked dough from Happy’s Pizza.

Beyond Johnson, the next receiver on the yardage total list for Detroit is Kris Durham. Durham has 357 yards on 29 catches. Despite only playing three games, Burleson is third for Lions receivers with 239 yards.

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So, too, did a certain frozen pizza company.

Yes, DiGiorno’s has made sure Nate Burleson will avoid similar carryout pizza-related peril by giving him all the delivery-quality pizza his heart could desire -- right in his freezer! Honestly, great marketing move by DiGiorno’s, a company that apparently pays a lot of attention to the ins and outs of the NFL injury reports.

Warning, the following Instagram photo montage contains disturbing images of pizza splattered onto the floor of a wrecked automobile.

These pics are from Lions receiver Nate Burleson, who broke his arm in a car accident last month trying to keep said pizza from sliding onto the floor.

For all the data and stats and meticulous 30 For 30 episodes and as-told-to biographies, sports keeps sending us running into the limits of what we can know. For all the bottomless tape to be broken down or statistics to be committed to memory, the boundary is always in sight -- we know what an athlete does, but we can’t know what that athlete feels or thinks in the crucial moment. They can tell us, and we still won’t know much more than the words; we are outside it, on the wrong end of a vast secret. We can only know so much.

Since then, the truth has revealed itself slowly, steadily -- there was not one pizza but two; they were from Happy’s Pizza in Farmington Hills. The pizzas were deep dish; the pizza that catalyzed the accident had pepperoni on it. But even as the story continues to come into focus, the unknowns rise and rise, like so much pizza dough not yet tossed.

The surgery was performed on Wednesday to fix two broken bones in Burleson’s arm. He will not be placed on injured reserve, but is expected to miss several weeks while he recovers from the injury. Through three games this season, Burleson has 19 catches for 239 yards. He is in his 11th season and has been with the Lions for four years.

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