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Jayden Boyd texted a group of Northeast High School football players from his hospital bed in September.

“I got shot,” he wrote.

Jeremiah Tellus read it and thought the quarterback was playing a joke. A few hours later, Tellus saw his friend on a Zoom call as Boyd told the team what happened.

Some Northeast players were sleeping at an assistant coach’s house in Frankford so they wouldn’t be late to practice on Labor Day morning. They were playing video games when they heard gunfire around 1 a.m. outside on Adams Avenue.

Boyd dropped to the floor of the living room.

“Because, you know, that’s what people do,” Boyd said.

Police said several shots were fired through the living room window, and one struck the 17-year-old.

“People always say it feels like it’s burning,” Boyd said. “But I just felt like something went in me. I said, ‘I got shot.’”

Police rushed Boyd to Temple University Hospital, where a surgeon removed a bullet that fractured the quarterback’s spine. His football season, they figured, was finished. Doctors said it could have been worse.

“One more inch to the right, and I would’ve been paralyzed,” he said. “I try not to think about that.”

Boyd told his teammates in the morning that everything would be OK and reminded them to focus on their next game. He was recovering from a gunshot wound but was thinking about his team. He’s a true quarterback, his mother said.

Boyd returned to school three weeks later but missed Northeast’s next nine games and could only watch as the Vikings lost to Lincoln in the Public League playoffs.

“He kept saying, ‘I let my team down,’” said his mother, Bahisha Durbin. “I said, ‘You didn’t let anybody down. This is not your fault.’”

But Boyd’s season did not end that night in Frankford. Doctors told him last week that he can play again, clearing the quarterback in time to join his team for its Thanksgiving game against rival Central. On the night he was shot, the teenager underwent surgery to remove the bullet. He never lost the ability to walk. After he recovered, he underwent physical therapy at Children’s Hospital before he was cleared to play. Boyd practiced Monday afternoon, wearing shoulder pads for the first time in more than two months. It was surreal, he said.

And his teammates — guys like Tellus, who prayed that their teammate was still alive until he showed up on that Zoom call — could not believe it.

Boyd made it back for Thanksgiving.

“Thankful,” he said. “Thursday is going to be very emotional. I know we’re going to score when I’m in the game, so I’m probably going to shed a couple tears.”

Football brought joy

Durbin signed up her son to play football when he was 7 years old, hoping the sport would help his ADHD.

“It was a godsend,” she said. “It’s helped out so much. I can’t thank the coaches enough.”

Football soon became Boyd’s life. That’s all he cares about, his mother said.

“I’m, like, a physical person, so I wanted to be a part of that,” Boyd said. “It brought joy to my life.”

Boyd wanted to be a wide receiver like Odell Beckham Jr. but soon fell in love with playing quarterback. He spent his first two high school seasons at Archbishop Carroll before transferring to Northeast.

He leaves his home in South Philly each morning at 6:15 and takes two buses and a subway to get to school.

“He’s a great part of the team,” said Tellus, a running back. “He’s a great friend. He has great loyalty. He always has my back. He’s a great friend to have.”

Boyd dreamed of playing college ball and studying sports medicine. That felt impossible, though, after he was shot. Schools had been in touch with him, but Boyd knew he needed to show more on the field. His junior year was supposed to be his chance to display his talent as a dual-threat quarterback — “I can beat you with my arm and legs,” he said — and earn a college scholarship.

“Football was the last thought on my mind, but he doesn’t care about anything else,” Durbin said. “He was like, ‘Life is over because football is over and I can’t play.’ I said, ‘It’s OK, Jay. It’s not like your grades are messed up and that’s why you can’t play. You can’t play because you got shot.’ He’s just so passionate.”

Boyd was devastated to not play and soon became nervous in his own neighborhood. He spent weeks with a friend in Drexel Hill as the shooting made him afraid of being in Philly. Boyd figured if he couldn’t be safe playing video games, then where could he?

He had nightmares and flashbacks about that night on Adams Avenue and now meets with a therapist. His mother asked him if he wanted to switch schools. Boyd declined.

He wanted to stay at Northeast with coach Nick Lincoln, who was at Temple University Hospital that night and kept Boyd involved with the team while he was sidelined.

“It’s not something you necessarily prepare for when you get into coaching,” Lincoln said. “But being in Philly for about 15 years, I can’t say it’s the first time that something has occurred to my players off the field. It’s always disheartening and surprising. You just try to figure out how you can best support him and his family. We want these kids to use the sport to better themselves, become men in the community, and not become products of an environment.”

Reasons to be grateful

Durbin was sleeping when her son called that night.

“Usually, when Jayden is blowing my phone up it’s because he wants something from Wawa,” Durbin said. “I’m like, ‘I’m not giving this boy any more money.’ That’s usually what it is.”

So she didn’t answer. And then her other son ran into her bedroom to tell her what happened.

“I called Jay, and I was yelling at him,” Durbin said. “I hear him, but I don’t. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning, and we don’t play in the streets at 1 o’clock.

“I said, ‘What were you doing outside?’ He said he wasn’t outside. So I said, ‘How did you get shot?’”

Boyd told his mother the story, reminding her that he was sleeping at a coach’s house.

“He was loud but calm,” Durbin said. “That’s what helped me not get hysterical. Because he was calm. He didn’t call me screaming.”

She rushed to the hospital, fearful that her son would never walk again, and then was relieved to see he was OK. Durbin worried about the teammates who were there that night.

“I felt bad for the kids who had to watch and see it,” Durbin said. “These are good kids. They’re not in the hood doing crazy stuff. All these kids know is football. The one kid was shaking so bad because the coach was telling him to apply pressure on [Boyd’s] back. He was scared.”

Earlier this month, police arrested Nasir Johnson, 26, and charged him with aggravated assault, a firearms charge, and related offenses. Police said they had obtained surveillance footage of someone wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt firing a gun on 4200 block of Griscom Street in the direction of the 1500 block of Adams Avenue, where Boyd was playing video games. Police said they recovered several items — including clothing that was consistent with what the suspect was wearing in the surveillance footage — when they arrested Johnson.

Lincoln called Boyd’s mother last week to say he wanted the quarterback to play a few snaps on Thanksgiving, just enough to give him a taste of being back on the field before next season. The series against Central, which dates to 1892, is said to be the nation’s oldest rivalry among public schools.

Boyd wasn’t able to show college coaches his promise this fall, but he still has another season of high school ball to prove himself. He can’t wait.

“We’re going to do something crazy next year,” he said.

His mother agreed to let him play Thursday but told the offensive line to “protect my baby.” She gave her son Psalms to recite before he takes the field, and she’ll be in the stands with an entire section of family and friends. Nearly three months after being shot, Boyd will be back on the field for one last game. His season is not finished.

“We’re just grateful,” Durbin said. “I’m grateful that he’s here. It’s Thanksgiving, for sure.”

Liam Taylor has been bracing himself for this. It whirls through his mind that this will be the last time he will wear shoulder pads. It will be the last time he will put on a football helmet. The last time he will practice. The last time he will play football.

The 5-foot-10, 190-pound Haverford High School senior tailback admits he has been taking mental snapshots, trying to inhale each fleeting moment, before they fade past his eyes from light to shadow. The thoughts paralyze him sometimes.

Then he catches himself with this: He is on the verge of something special Thursday in the Fords’ traditional Thanksgiving Day game at Central League rival Upper Darby at 10 a.m. Only two players have ever rushed for more than 5,700 career yards in the long history of Delaware County high school football. Taylor is one of them. The other is former Cardinal O’Hara star Kevin Jones, the 2004 NFL first-round draft choice who now is a professor at his alma mater, Virginia Tech.

On Thursday, Taylor will need 79 yards to break Jones’ Delaware County career rushing record of 5,790 yards. Taylor enters the game with 5,712 career yards after establishing the single-season Delaware County record — previously held by Interboro graduate Abu Kamara (2,832) — when he rushed for 3,006 yards last season as a junior.

Against eight- and nine-man defensive fronts designed to stop him this season, Taylor has been “held” to 1,950 yards rushing this year.

Breaking the record will not be easy, Taylor says. Not only will Upper Darby try everything to stop him from surpassing that mark, but it also will be his last football game. He has opted, despite recruiting attention from numerous colleges, to not play football beyond Thursday.

He realizes he will be saying goodbye to a part of himself.

“That’s the hard part,” he said. “I look forward to practice. I have been playing football for 10 years, since I was in second grade. When I think about it, other than going to school for 12 years, it is the longest thing I have ever done in my life. It’s why I am looking forward to this Thanksgiving Day game. This will be like a backyard game you play with your friends after school. When we lost to Council Rock South [27-7 in the opening round of the District 1 Class 6A playoffs on Oct. 31 in Newtown], that hit hard. I know we had one more game to play. But it was a long bus ride back. We didn’t play any music.

“I love football. I’m trying to savor everything right now. Last year and this year have been a lot of fun. I decided over the spring not to play in college. I’ll miss it, and I am not fully over it. I never really gave it a thought of playing college football. It was difficult to make the decision, but I definitely would not call it an internal civil war, because I knew what I wanted. Every Saturday morning waking up after games was a very sore day. It was definitely a part of my decision. It was not a huge part of it. It’s hard to let something you love go. I’m ready for it, though.”

Taylor said posting stats such as his does not happen without help. He noted he would not be going anywhere without senior tackles Rocco Kelleher and Oliver Clune, senior guard Brendan Walker, junior guard Joe McGinley, senior center Emmet Gillespie, and rotating senior tackle and guard Liam McCloskey.

Haverford coach Luke Dougherty has been the buffer for incoming colleges interested in Taylor. Dougherty, who is in his fifth season at the helm and eighth overall with the program, had to tell coaches his star player was not interested in playing college football.

After his junior year, Taylor, who carries a weighted 4.7 GPA, was attracting Patriot and Ivy League attention. As this season progressed, Taylor has only strengthened his resolve not to play college football, Dougherty said. It gave Taylor a newfound freedom on the field, playing without feeling the scrutiny of college recruiters.

“Liam can easily play college football at a lot of places, and when we revisited his decision in early October, he told me, ‘Coach, I am dead set on my decision not to play college football. I’m loving this,’” Dougherty said. “The Patriots and Ivys all liked Liam, but it never reached the formal offering process because by that time, when he did not go to any of the college camps he was invited to, word was out. Penn came here for Liam. Cornell came in three or four times. Bucknell came to the building.

“College coaches are a little different. They can’t understand someone as talented as Liam not wanting to play college football. Coaches are still coming in asking, ‘Is Liam still not interested in playing college football?’ It was shock for a lot of these guys.

“Penn’s [offensive line coach] Kyle Metzler, who recruits our area, probably said it best when he told me, ‘There are a lot of people who go to really good schools who don’t play football and make a lot of money in this world. God bless Liam, he knows what he wants, because we have too many guys at Penn who come here thinking that they have a meal ticket to the NFL and we try to convince them that they’re here for the four-year Penn education. This isn’t a transfer portal launching pad.’”

Many schools still left their information for Dougherty in case Taylor changed his mind. Taylor has not changed his mind. He wants to go to Georgia, his the alma mater of his father, Eric.

Special motivation

Taylor comes from special genes. His father, a former Haverford star, is the son of former Springfield (Delco) coach Rick Taylor. His maternal grandfather is Jan Stefanski, the brother of Eddie Stefanski, the former Bonner-Prendergast and Penn basketball star and 76ers general manager who is the father of Cleveland Browns coach Kevin Stefanski.

In January, Eric was diagnosed with cancer. It is under control. He received immunotherapy for three months. Progress has been made. He is still receiving chemo maintenance.

Liam entered his senior year with that on his mind.

Eric did not miss a game this season.

“I was mad because this is something I couldn’t do anything about, but my dad inspires me. He inspires me every day,” Liam said. “Thinking about it, I suppose I took his mind off what he was going through. My dad loves seeing me play. He is always on my mind. If playing helped him get through this, that’s all I care about. We talk about breaking the record all the time. My whole family is going to be there. I’ll be thinking about my dad. We get to gather around a high school football game and not think about real life.

“This won’t be easy. It will be good. Hopefully I break the record, and everyone will be happy. It will be sad because I’ll be taking off a Haverford uniform for the last time.”

Eric, a 1990 Haverford graduate and longtime Upper Dublin assistant coach and special education teacher, is bracing himself for the end of Liam’s football career, too. Because of the cancer treatments, he missed Liam’s lacrosse games last spring and could not travel to see his daughter, Emma, pitch for Yale’s softball team.

“For three hours every Friday night, I don’t know who was more excited for games, me or Liam,” said Eric, who has been on a medical sabbatical from Upper Dublin. “He inspires me, seeing the things he does on a football field and how well he plays. Our whole family was able to come out and watch games. I was never able to beat my dad at Springfield when I played at Haverford, but Liam beat them his junior year. Liam wants to go south, and he wants to enjoy his college experience.

“It is tough not watching him play in college. He is so good. He could play in college. We’re going to have to adopt another kid to watch. We have had that talk. He can come home from college and play in the local softball bar league. You can’t do that with football. This is it. He’s OK with it. It was tough. There were conversations. We were looking for him to change his mind.”

But Eric and his wife, Christa, raised Liam to have a mind of his own.

“That’s why he will be great at anything he does,” Eric said. “He is kind of special. He says I’m his inspiration. He’s my inspiration, too. But where the speed comes from, I don’t know. It’s certainly not from the Taylor side. I see my wife run, too, so I don’t know where he gets it.”

Then Eric recalled a story about Liam when he first began playing football.

Eric or Christa would drop him off and pick him up after practice was over. They had to shuttle their daughters around and rarely had time to sit and watch Liam’s practices. One time Christa, who is Haverford’s field hockey coach, happened to arrive at football practice just before it wrapped up one evening. The team was finishing its sprints, and she noticed something.

Christa recalls going down to the field and asking Liam, “Are you OK?” Liam looked up at his mom and said, “I’m OK, why?” Christa replied, “Because you’re last. Listen, you don’t always have to be first, but you can’t be last.”

After that, every time Christa and Eric picked up Liam, he was in front.

He’s been front and center, it seems, ever since.