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Terrell Davis battles a mystery injury
Week 13 Awards | Factoid
... Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag. SEATTLE -- Terrell Davis understands what the outside world must be thinking. The MRIs show nothing wrong with his left knee, shin, calf or ankle. Two orthopedic specialists who have examined him within the past two weeks can find nothing wrong with his left knee, shin, calf or ankle. Last Wednesday, he flew to Oakland for the second exam, with Dr. Roger Mann, who found nothing structurally wrong and labeled the problem "idiopathic pain," or unexplained pain. Mann basically told Davis: You should be able to play. On Sunday former player Brent Jones stopped just short of saying Davis should suck it up and play on the CBS telecast of Denver's 38-31 win against the Seahawks. Davis feels the hot breath of the outside world, and he understands the warriors' code of the NFL. Play, damn it. Your team's season is on the line, with a playoff-type battle every Sunday, and nothing's broken. Get out there and play.
"If I could play, believe me, I'd be playing," Davis said quietly but forcefully outside the Broncos' locker room after Sunday's game. "But there is a line a player has to know when you're dealing with injuries. Either you can play or you can't. And at this point, I just can't play." He hasn't been talking much through his nightmare of a season -- Sunday was his seventh missed game -- but he agreed to discuss the injury with me in the dank hallway underneath Husky Stadium. The history: After working tirelessly to come back from 1999 ACL surgery, the 1998 NFL and Super Bowl MVP returned for the Broncos' opener and suffered left foot and ankle sprains against the Rams in the season opener. Since then, while continuing rehab work on his knee and ankle, he said intense pain has developed in the shin area of his left leg. "There's pain in the shin area and the calf area, really from the calf area to the area around the top of the ankle," he explained. The maddening thing, and the inexplicable thing, is how he was able to gut out a 33-carry game against the Jets on Nov. 5, and then play the following week against the Raiders, and since then, nothing. "There's something seriously wrong in there, and I don't know what it is," Davis told me. "People who know me know I've played with pain most of my career," he said. "Ankles, split ribs, shoulder ..." "Migraines," reminded Bronco p.r. aide Richard Stewart, standing nearby. "Migraines," Davis added. "But this thing, whatever it is, is more severe. The encouraging thing after I saw the specialist this week was that they found nothing structurally wrong with the leg. That's good. But then I try to push off the leg" -- he did it just then, trying to do a toe-raise with the left leg -- "I can't push up. It's very, very painful. And if you can't do that, you can't play football. It's strange. It's frustrating." Then he looked at me in the eye and asked: "You see what I'm going through?" Part of me wonders this, cynically: Davis got his big contract after his Super Bowl success, and maybe he doesn't have the motivation to work as hard as he did when he was a sixth-round pick fighting to make his mark. And with quarterback Brian Griese's gutty (some would stay stupidly gutty) performance two weeks ago -- beating the Raiders with a third-degree shoulder separation -- fresh in the team's collective mind, it's only natural for some in the Broncos organization to wonder if Davis is faking it. I don't know Davis well. I've never spent any extended time outside a locker room with him. But after talking to him Sunday night, I feel this way: We can't know what's in this man's body. We can't know his pain. It's so out of character for him to not play when all signs and doctors say he should play. I'm reminded of the J.R. Richard story, when the former Houston Astros pitcher kept telling everybody his neck hurt and everybody kept telling him to stop whining, and then he was felled by a stroke. After much deliberation -- and my basic faith in human beings until they do something to show that faith is unfounded -- I believe Davis. I believe the Davis who looks me in the eye and swears he's hurt too badly to play. This week Davis will get more treatment on the leg. He'll try to practice, though I doubt, with a game next week on the hard fake turf in New Orleans, he has much of a chance to play this week. Lucky for the Broncos rookie, Mike Anderson (971 yards through 12 games) is carrying a heavy load. "I'm optimistic I'll be able to play again this year," Davis said. "But this is a strange injury. I don't know what more I can do to get ready to play." Week 13 AwardsOFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: New Orleans QB Aaron Brooks. Stats, schmats. The numbers that meant nothing, relatively: Brooks was 19-of-27 for 190 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions and two rushing touchdowns. The numbers that meant everything: Saints 31, Rams 24 -- at the Trans World Dome. The more I watch the NFL, the more I think: Stop trying to figure the game out. Just revel in the sheer drama and enjoyment of the new stars, like Brooks, who surface almost every week. DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Denver LB John Mobley, who, early in Broncos' 38-31 win at Seattle, made the most technically perfect sack-forced-fumble hit on a quarterback you'll ever see. Playing possum as if he was going to help in pass-coverage outside the Seattle right tackle, Mobley, at the Seahawks' snap midway through the first quarter, took a wide and unblocked rush at Brock Huard. Huard never saw the truck coming. Lowering his shoulder, Mobley crashed into Huard's blind side, shoulder pads into rib cage, knocking every bit of air from Huard's lungs. Lucky for the 'Hawks, tackle Chris Gray recovered the fumble at the Seattle 10. Unlucky for the 'Hawks, Huard left a few plays later with bruised ribs and perhaps a bruised kidney, and he didn't return. For the game, Mobley played well sideline to sideline, with eight tackles and the sack. SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK: San Diego K John Carney. Pretty simple choice. His 52-yard field goal from the left hash booted the Chargers out of the record books. Now they're 1-11. And they will win two more, by the way. COACH OF THE WEEK: Detroit head coach Gary Moeller. He's 3-0 since taking over for the plummeting Bobby Ross. Granted, the wins are over a bad Atlanta team, the vastly overrated Giants and the 3-9 Patriots. But Moeller has put some life back into the Lions' offense; it's averaging 26 points a game during this run. And he's made the players who thought Ross was a black cloud over the team look forward to coming to work again. Now we'll see if Moeller really waved a magic wand over the Motor City. The next three games for the Leos: at Minnesota, at Green Bay, at Jets. Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only MeA leashed dog exited the left elevator of the south elevator bank at the Seattle Westin early Sunday morning, followed by a participant on his way to the Seattle Marathon. The dog left three steaming calling cards in the elevator. You can't make this stuff up. The 10 Things I Think I Think1a. I think the most beautiful vista from an NFL press box is the one from Husky Stadium, even on a rainy day like Sunday. What a sight. To the left, or north, through the flock of seagulls, is the compact, traditional University of Washington campus. To the right, just over the HuskyTron scoreboard and the pristine softball field and the trees shedding the last vestiges of fall foliage, is sailboat-dotted Lake Washington. b. I think in one month I will have a heck of a hard time determining whether Rod Smith or Ed McCaffery makes my AP All-Pro team at the receiver spot opposite Randy Moss. Smith was magnificent Sunday, with 160 rushing/receiving yards, including 78 yards on the first three carries out of the backfield in his life. c. I think -- no, I know -- I ate the biggest Fuji apple of my life on Sunday. From Yakima, the fruit-stand guy said. Right down the road from the Bledsoe house. 2. I think this is what makes coaches love working for the patriarch of the Giants' family, Wellington Mara: Last week, a day after the Giants lost decisively to Detroit, he walked into Jim Fassel's office to commiserate with him. "Remember," Mara told Fassel, repeating something he's said before, "if the job was easy, you wouldn't have it." Fassel knew what he meant, that the position never would have been available if someone before him hadn't been fired or released. 3. I think, as we all thought, Jimmy Johnson could have had the Monday Night Football gig last spring: "Well, it got kind of serious" Johnson told me about meeting with MNF rebuilder Don Ohlmeyer . "Don came to Miami and we talked, but I could see I wasn't as passionate about the thing as Don was. I told him: 'I'm sorry. I can't do it. I may beg you for the job in two years, but my heart's not in it right now.'" 4. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week: a. Last week I extolled the virtues of Best in Show, my movie of the year. Well, wife Ann reminds me how good Wonder Boys was, and she's right. Terrific film. Great job by Michael Douglas. And now I must add Continental's in-flight movie on the five-hour, 52-minute flight west the other night, The Perfect Storm. I know this film drew mixed-to-poor reviews, but good movies transport you somewhere and make you feel something. That's what this movie did. b. There is no holiday on earth like Thanksgiving. My plate at brother Bob's home in South Windsor, Conn., at 2:40 p.m. Thursday: two slices white meat, one helping mashed potatoes (no gravy), one large spoonful of Ann King's fresh green beans with fennel (incredible, just incredible), one large spoonful cooked carrots, one large spoonful of sister Pam's squash casserole (an all-time great), one slice of sister-in-law Caroline's fresh cranberry bread, more turkey on the second go-round, one sliver of Mom's angel pie (I never get tired of this, Mom, and never will), one slice of Ann's apple pie (I order every one of you to have this before you die), one large mug of Starbucks house blend with cream, and one half of the Vikings-Cowboys embarrassment. Everything was delicious, except the game. c. It's over, Al. Give it to Bush. Be magnanimous. d. I must be getting old, or bitter. But hearing "Frosty the Snowman" for the third time of the weekend Saturday in Seattle's Golden Bagel Cafe made me think how much I hate how early the holiday season comes. e. Withdrawal of the Week: No more Montclair High field hockey to report. But in the next couple of days we are putting to bed the 16-page program for Thursday night's banquet. f. Landed in Seattle Friday night and noted the UConn women's basketball team was in town, so I hustled over to U. of Washington campus for the game. Wow. Three observations after the Eastern Huskies' 100-54 win over the Western Huskies: One, if you want to teach intense, suffocating defense, watch UConn; pure hustle and effort. Two, freshman guard/forward Diana Taurasi is Baby Magic, an instinctive offensive and defensive force and ballhandler who looks like the next big star of the women's game. Three, it's very easy to understand why the state of Connecticut is so in love with this team. They are selfless, with a Tar Heel-like zeal for congratulating teammates and passing and playing pure team basketball, and you can see by their smiles and pep and verve that they live to play the game. g. Coffeenerdness: Call me traitorous. But my new favorite latte comes from Torrefazione Italia. Creamy and uniform and the perfect combination of espresso and steamed milk. 5. I think I learned the nationwide zest for the Vikings first hand the other day. First foot, actually. I ran (Can you believe that, me running?) the 64th-annual 4.8-mile Manchester (Conn.) Road Race with daughter Laura the field hockey player on Thanksgiving morning, not far from my brother Bob's turkey-day feast. And at the four-mile mark, here came Cris Carter and Moss, speeding by me. Now, this was no small race. It was run by 11,400 nutty New Englanders, and it is a tremendously fun event, with bag-pipers and rock bands and speakers blaring "Eye of the Tiger" and a car stereo blasting "Help!" by the Beatles, and drunken fans cheering us on and one large sign at the 2.8-mile mark proclaiming: "WE FEEL YOUR PAIN." Two guys wearing Vikings uniforms, numbers 80 and 84, glided past me and got a huge hand from the crowd, though they were half-a-continent away from their fan base. I've learned in recent years what fervor Vikings fans have, from Connecticut to California. By the way, I wore a Penn State Athletic Department T-shirt (for no reason other than it was the top T-shirt in my drawer Wednesday afternoon when I packed) and some fan screamed at me as the whole world passed my slow and sorry rear end: "Start hustling, Penn State! You're letting JoePa down!" 6. I think I wonder if Dave Brown ever wakes up in the morning and says: I should have been a CPA. 7a. I think this is the amazing thing about Carter, the second receiver in history to verge on 1,000 catches (he has 995 entering Thursday night's game with the Lions): The all-time leader, Jerry Rice, has 1,259 receptions. Rice wants to play one more year, which he likely will do in another uniform in 2001. Let's say he goes to the Ravens. (I'm sort of making that up, though I think it's logical, a passing team with inconsistent young guys and a passing coach who loves veterans, as Brian Billick showed with Ben Coates and Sharpe this year.) "He'll be somewhere in the 1,300s," Carter told me over the weekend. That means a kid coming in now -- some stud like Miami's Santana Moss -- will have to play 13 seasons and average more than 100 catches a season to contend for Rice's career mark. Unless offenses change to the run-and-shoot league-wide, Rice's record will be safe for a long, long time. b. I think this is the weird kind of record I like: Minnesota and Detroit will tie an NFL mark simultaneously this week: They'll each play in their second consecutive Thursday night game. 8. I think in the haste to hand Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher the defensive rookie of the year award (and he may well deserve it in a month) we should not forget the Saints' terrific first-year end, Darren Howard, who was supposed to be an attitude problem coming into the league from Kansas State, but has turned out to be the surprise of Haslett's surprising team. "A rookie can't be having a better year," Haslett told me. Howard's take on life in the NFL: "When I'd watch NFL games before I got in the league, I didn't see a lot of guys have fun. It seemed very businesslike. Not here. These guys have fun every day. I've learned if you're going to be great at this job you've got to have fun doing it." 9. I think this is class: A few weeks ago, I wrote a story for SI about what it takes to be a fullback in today's NFL. I led with a colorful story about Detroit's Cory Schlesinger, who grew up thumping around Demolition Derby tracks in Nebraska and who makes facemask-bending a weekly event, and wrote about what a good fullback Schlesinger is. And so I got home the other day and there was this message on my home machine: "Peter, it's Cory. Cory Schlesinger. Just wanted to thank you for the story you wrote. It was good. If you ever need anything, give me a call. Thanks again." 10. I think, in the old King crystal ball, I see Dan Reeves stepping down a month from today. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL and appears
regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN's NFL Preview. Join him Dec. 7 for his monthly NFL chat. To submit a question via his mailbag, here to send a
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