Sports Columnist Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
10/24/2008
On Sundays it always looks so beautiful.
From the safe distance of stadium seats or a family room couch, the NFL looks like a well-choreographed but tolerably violent bit of athletic artistry. It is a thing of beauty the way tailbacks and receivers dabble in their highly skilled, space-seeking acts of avoidance and the big-bodied linemen and linebackers indulge in their endless slam dances at the line of scrimmage.
On Sundays in the NFL, we all oooh and ahhhh.
But if you want to know what the NFL is really like, you need to stroll through the halls of an NFL training complex on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and see the men who play this brilliantly violent game. It doesn't look so beautiful at midweek. These are the days when their well-muscled bodies go through the incredible physical aftershock of Sunday's endless collisions.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the players wince and limp.
"My body doesn't stop aching until Thursday," Leonard Little said as he sat in front of his locker stall at Rams Park. "People don't have any idea what sort of damage is done to our bodies during those games and how long it takes us every week to get to feeling normal again."
The toughest daily test for pro football's battle-weary athletes is finding a way to determine whether their bodies are sufficiently healed enough to be put to another Sunday test. No matter how badly we think we understand what sort of physical toll they endure, or how quickly they should be able to muster up some tough-guy persona that lets them play through those aches and pains, it ain't that simple.
"Anyone could be tough in someone else's body," tailback Steven Jackson said when someone questioned why he wouldn't be able to play through the pain of a right thigh bruise he suffered near the end of this week's 34-14 victory over the Dallas Cowboys, and be ready to rumble this Sunday against the New England Patriots.
Jackson knows how important he is to the Rams' fortunes. He understands clearly that this is a dramatically better football team when a healthy Steven Jackson is the offense's primary weapon. He knows what is at stake if he can find a way to get back on the field at or near full strength in time for Sunday's showdown on the road.
So on Thursday, for the second consecutive day, Jackson spent most of the two-hour practice in a training room pool trying to heal those battered muscles in his bruised thigh. He said he felt a lot better Thursday than he did on Wednesday, and probably three times better than he did four days earlier when he walked out of the Edward Jones Dome locker room with a stiff-legged gait.
But as badly as a desperate public might want him to miraculously heal and suit up for that...
-10-24-2008, 04:27 AM
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