Josh Sweat overcame near-death scare on way to Super Bowl 2023

PHOENIX — The Eagles called it a “life-threatening situation” when it happened, when The Eagle Who Cheated Death woke up light-headed and sweating early in the week before last year’s playoff loss to Tom Brady and the Buccaneers. 

Josh Sweat had an artery rupture while at home — and he knew something was not right. 

“I felt my abdomen heavy from all the blood spilling in there,” Sweat said, “but I didn’t know what was happening.” 

After calling his parents and his agent, Sweat called an Eagles team doctor. 

“He asked me what was wrong,” Sweat told The Post, “and I said, ‘I think I’m dying.’ “

“He thought I was joking. He said, ‘But you got Tom Brady to get this weekend.’ ” 

Instead, he got an Uber ride to the hospital for an emergency procedure. 

“It wasn’t that scary to me because I called [the team doctor], I was like ‘Just get me there, let me find out what’s going on,’ and then they let me know, but I was already in the hospital at that point when I found out how serious it was.” 

His mother, Carlette, who would make the five-hour drive from Chesapeake, Va., remembers the call from her son. 

“He said he was light-headed and he had lost his vision for a few,” Carlette told The Post. 

“The scary part was when they said how much blood he actually had in his stomach. They said if he had fallen asleep, he never woulda woke up again, and Josh loves to sleep.” 

He was transported from the hospital to the Penn trauma center for an emergency procedure to have the artery cauterized. Sweat stayed overnight and Carlette saw him the next day. The Eagles medical staff wisely would not let him play against the Bucs, much to his chagrin. He was, however, cleared for the Pro Bowl. 

“They really didn’t know what had happened, how it occurred and never did find out,” Carlette said. 

This was not Sweat’s first scary medical situation. 

Sweat had been carried off the field on a stretcher after attempting a tackle in Week 17 against the Saints, and thankfully it turned out to be a stinger, and nothing more. 

He came close to having his left leg amputated in high school in 2014 and waking up without a football dream. 

“We were blocking an extra point,” Sweat recalled. “I’m the rusher … you’re only supposed to have one rusher. But when the other side rushes, then you hit each other. He trips, falls into my leg, breaks it in half. … ” 

Breaks what? 

“Like dislocates the leg, kinda at a 45, outward.” 

45-degree angle? “Pretty much, yeah.” 

Sweat recalls the doctor at the hospital offering chilling words: 

“‘We’re gonna run the test to see if you damaged the artery, so you might have to lose it,’ as he was already pumping the anesthesia in me,” Sweat said, “so by the time I coulda talked s –t, I was already going to sleep.”

“So, I thought I was gonna wake up without the leg.” 

Carlette: “I don’t know why they would tell a child that.” 

It was a left knee dislocation. 

“I had a good surgeon,” Sweat said. “Russ Warren from the Giants. I don’t know how that happened, but I got hooked up somehow.” 

Sweat would be a fourth-round draft pick in 2018 out of Florida State. A 6-foot-5, 265-pounder who likes studying Chandler Jones, Leonard Floyd and the Jaguars’ Josh Allen, Sweat enjoyed a breakout 2022 season, totaling 11 sacks. 

“Eleven ain’t enough,” he says. “I’m better than that. I don’t think I’m close to the ceiling right now.” 

Carlette was flying in Friday to watch her 25-year-old son play in a Super Bowl. She remembers when he was an introverted boy who could build computers. Now he is friendly and laughs easily and envisions greatness. 

“It’s a miracle just to see that the way he still carries himself, he’s still happy, he still smiles, never complains about nothing that happens to him in his life, and just keep pushing,” she said proudly. 

At Oscar F. Smith High School in Chesapeake, Va., Sweat was ESPN’s No. 1 senior recruit. 

“Now football has a different meaning to me, especially when I almost lost it all,” Sweat said. “I was a top recruit and all that, so I want to be back home where I was, one of the best guys at what I do. I got a shot to put myself back out there ’cause like I’m very underrated, so this is a chance for me to go make it happen and help do something special.” 

The Eagle Who Cheated Death will be charging after Patrick Mahomes and chasing that second Super Bowl championship for the Eagles, and his first ring.

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