How Daniel Jones' ex-Duke teammates are helping protect his injured fibula

INDIANAPOLIS – At the time Northwestern edge rusher Joe Gaziano pounced on Daniel Jones, driving the then-Duke quarterback’s shoulder into the turf late in the third quarter of an otherwise innocuous early-September college football game, Jones’ pair of walk-on roommates were already scheming to launch something far bigger than anything they’d produce in their football careers.

Together, Kevin Gehsmann and Clark Bulleit would appear in just 44 snaps for Duke as a deep rotational linebacker and backup center as they majored in mechanical and biomedical engineering; their player pages require no more than cursory skims to fully digest.

Their two-year Duke captain, star quarterback and future NFL first-round pick of a roommate? More like a dense portion of a chapter book.

And yet, when Jones went down, that splitting pain shooting across his chest the moment he stood up and began to jog off the field following the third-down sack, those teammates-turned-roommates became his lifeline.

Jones, on the other hand, was their guinea pig.

They provided a slim pad to stuff underneath the left leg of Jones’ football pants the past two weeks as the Colts' quarterback has played through a reported fractured fibula. The Jones-specific prototype that was seven years in the making is now, perhaps, the most famous lemon-colored, shin pad-looking device in sports.

“I’m lucky to have smart friends,” Jones laughed Wednesday at his locker at the Colts practice facility, the pad in question sitting on a shelf nestled between a black hat and his AirPods case. “It’s pretty low-profile and fits to my leg pretty well. I don’t really notice it.”

That September in 2018, as Jones attempted to defy doctors’ initial prognosis of five weeks on the sidelines for his clavicle to heal, Gehsmann and Bulleit hard-launched what at the time was merely a business sketch: patient-specific, 3D-printed braces and pads morphed out of a 60-second video clip captured on an iPhone, uploaded through an app, designed by engineers and printed via layering of medical-grade polymers onto custom made padding unique to a single person’s body part.

Lower legs, hips, thumbs, wrists, feet, faces and noses – Protect3d prints devices for them all. Its customers range from a college swimmer who can’t stand the idea of a plaster cast keeping her out of the pool for weeks; a Pro Bowl NFL offensive lineman looking for preventative protection for his hands and thumbs; an NBA All-Star guard longing for a form-fitting facemask to shield a broken nose; a middle-aged woman looking for a brace to wear during her daily walks; and a Green Beret in need of support to cure daily trips and falls.

And now, thanks to Jones’ brainy Duke teammates, a resurgent NFL quarterback who finds himself in the regular season fight of his life as he aims to load an entire franchise on his back as the Indianapolis Colts eye the toughest schedule to close the regular season while sitting tied for the AFC South division lead. Jones was Protect3d’s latest call, two weeks ago fresh off X-rays that revealed a crack in the former sixth-overall pick’s left fibula.

Seven years ago, that perfect fit for Jones’ clavicle pad took at least four tries – starting with merely a proof-of-concept that was whittled down to a rigid, form-fitting medical device smaller than a dollar bill with the help of Jones’ in-person feedback on its form and function.

Two weeks ago? A 60-second scan from 600 miles away, a 90-minute design process and a hastily bought flight from North Carolina to Kansas City, Missouri, and 36 hours later, Jones had the leg pad in his hands, two days after he was first listed as “limited” on the Colts’ practice report.

Gehsmann hand-delivered the pad to Jones and the Colts medical staff the night before the team’s 23-20 loss to the Chiefs, capping a whirlwind 48 hours stemming from an injury that Jones told reporters last week had been nagging at him for some time, but only really flared up to the level of needing to sit out a few reps of a November 20 practice.

“I think they had the idea before (his broken collarbone), but I was the first pad that they printed that was played with,” Jones said Wednesday. “They were starting up that business and had had the idea about it my last year at Duke.

“And since then, they’ve built a pretty good business, 3D printing those devices and pads. Kinda funny that I’m using one of them again, but they’re smart guys. I’m lucky to have smart friends.”

Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Daniel Jones' fibula: How ex-Duke teammates are protecting Colts QB