It’s not uncommon for NFL players to go to the bathroom on the sidelines, but usually it doesn’t involve “going for two.”
Well, former Patriots linebacker Larry Izzo once did exactly that.
“That was wild, but we’ve all had to do something like that,” three-time Super Bowl champion Matt Chatham said on The Zach Gelb Show. “Larry went over the top there with that one, but there was another one in Detroit where we’re trying to time it out based on the TV timeout, and Larry did an awesome job of just alerting them before the TV timeout that he was going to need to run to the restroom, and that sucks. I’ve been there 100 times. I had to do it myself in Denver once.”
Hilariously, Izzo used the restroom within the flow of the game, running straight from kickoff coverage to the bathroom.
“You see the kick go into the end zone, and you see Larry run past [the kick returner] and then run past the goal post and then up the ramp,” Chatham recalled. “You’re like, ‘Where the hell is that guy going?’ And what it was was Larry running into the bathroom. But he told the coaches before the kick that’s what he was going to do.
“Potty problems are something that players deal with all the time in NFL games,” Chatham continued, laughing. “It’s usually not something we generally talk about too much, but yeah, that one story for Larry obviously became pretty famous.”
Patriots coach Bill Belichick gave Izzo the game ball for his efforts.
“He made light of it,” Chatham said. “He delivered it with this [attitude of], ‘This is a good joke,’ but [they] liked the commitment to not just leaving the game. ‘You did what you had to do to stay.’ He made light of it, but at the end of the day, he was like, ‘You sacrificed.’ He delivered it in a team meeting. He had a ball made up for it and everything. Bill’s good that way, but he’s good at pulling you together during the course of a long season, finding something light-hearted.”
The Patriots had a good laugh about it, but a few minutes later, it was back to business. Belichick made sure of it.
“It’s a roller coaster,” Chatham said. "You got to be used to it, but you appreciate it.”