Last October, Seth Russell had 380 yards passing and 160 yards rushing in Baylor’s 62-38 win at home over West Virginia. No Mountaineers opponent had ever passed for 300 yards and run for 100 yards in a game. No one has since then.

But 13 days later, Russell was in Morgantown on an operating table. He broke a vertabrae in his neck against Iowa State and needed a specific surgery. He found what he wanted at WVU Medicine, where is brother is a resident and where one of the very best orthopaedic surgeons was ready to get him back on the field.

Russell won’t play this week. He broke his left ankle against Oklahoma a few weeks ago — don’t Google it — but he might not have played this season if not for help from WVU.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for him,” WVU coach Dana Holgorsen said. “I think he’s a great kid. He’s overcome a lot. It’s unfortunate that he got hurt a couple of weeks ago. I wish him the very best moving forward.”

Russell is nevertheless grateful for what WVU Medicine gave him last October. His older brother, Joshua, is a resident in WVU’s department of orthopaedics, and it was Joshua who took an interest in Seth’s initial diagnosis and subsequent options.

“When he heard about my injury, he did a lot of research about who are the best doctors in the nation to do this type of surgery,” Seth said. “There were only three who did my type of surgery, and one happened to be in Morgantown at WVU.”

The first wave of opinions and possibilities before that weren’t entirely encouraging for Russell. One doctor told him to consider giving up football. Another insisted. Others presented alternatives to a two-level fusion, which might have been more complicated and would have required a longer recovery. Joshua began looking into single-level fusion. He found assistance down the hall in Dr. Sanford Emery, the department chairman who is the president of the American Orthopaedic Association.

“My brother always tells me you want to make sure your patient is comfortable with you and knows everything is going to go well,” Seth said. “They can’t promise you anything, and you can’t promise anything with surgery, but [Emery] is one of the best in the business.

“I trusted my brother and the research he did, because he’s been through it and done years of medical school. He loves me and wouldn’t put me in a situation that wasn’t going to benefit me the most.”