Column: Veteran NFL quarterbacks again are on top after major injuries

The synchronicity is striking.

Sunday’s slate of NFL games features NFC and AFC showdowns between the division leaders in the East and West. Dallas, which is still in first in the NFC East despite losing to Washington on Monday night, plays host to Arizona. In the AFC, Denver plays at New England.

Showcased in those games will be two quarterbacks selected No. 1 overall, Denver’s Peyton Manning and Arizona’s Carson Palmer, against a couple of draft-day nobodies, New England’s Tom Brady (sixth round) and Dallas’ Tony Romo (undrafted).

But something else bonds these quarterbacks. Each comes from the same place, one of darkness and uncertainty. Manning, Palmer, Brady and Romo have had to overcome devastating injuries to get to this point.

• Manning had the neck injury that jeopardized his career.

• Brady sustained a low hit in the first quarter of the 2008 opener that bent his left knee the wrong way and tore multiple ligaments.

• Romo had back surgery in December and lingering issues that left him in excruciating pain this off-season. He was unable to lift his toddler son for part of the off-season, let alone participate in most team activities. He reinjured his back Monday night and missed much of the second half but was able to return for the end of the fourth quarter and overtime.

• Palmer has dealt with multiple major setbacks. In early 2006 he suffered numerous ligament tears, a shredded ligament, damaged cartilage and a dislocated kneecap on his left leg. More recently, he dealt with serious elbow issues, and this season had a nerve problem in his shoulder that didn’t allow him to lift his hand over his head.

The way these quarterbacks have played lately, you might not even detect they’d hit anything more than a career speed bump. Even Palmer — who sat out three games this season and had no comeback timetable because of the unpredictability of nerve damage — appears entirely on top of his game. He threw a beautiful rainbow pass to rookie John Brown on Sunday for the go-ahead, 75-yard touchdown in a 24-20 victory over Philadelphia.

Asked after the game whether he could have thrown that pass two weeks ago, Palmer said: “I’ll say yeah because you can’t prove me wrong now.”

Palmer said his confidence in his arm has returned quickly.

“It’s been three and a half weeks since I’ve started throwing again,” he said. “You know, arm strength just comes with throwing. It doesn’t come back over a long period of time, it comes back pretty quickly, pretty rapidly. There were some balls that I knew I wouldn’t have been able to throw against Washington three weeks ago and some balls I felt a little more comfortable with last week, and this week I feel like I’m getting all the way back to 100%.”

Palmer, who also had an 80-yard scoring pass to Larry Fitzgerald, is the first quarterback in franchise history to throw multiple touchdown passes in each of his first four games of a season. The Cardinals are 11-2 in the last 13 games he has started.

Romo suffered a disc injury in his back in the fourth quarter of a December game against Washington last season but kept playing and led the Cowboys to victory. He missed the finale against Philadelphia and, after undergoing surgery, spent the next eight months rehabilitating.

Heading into Monday night’s game against the Redskins, Romo had 14 touchdowns, six intercepted passes, and a lofty average passer rating of 104.7, tying him with Brady.

Romo recently told reporters that recovering from such injuries is “just a part of playing professional sports.”

“You’re playing in a game and you’re hurt or banged up or whatever and you just kind of play through it,” he said. “As a competitor you kind of feel like, ‘I’ll worry about it after the game,’ and you do everything you can. It felt like the season was on the line at the time so you kind of lay it on the line and you let the chips fall after the game.”

Brady has been relatively healthy since recovering from the severe knee injury that sidelined him for all but the opening minutes of the 2008 season.

That seems like a distant memory now, as does the speculation this season that Brady might just be washed up. Sunday marked his 100th regular-season home start, and he made the most of it. In leading the Patriots to a 51-23 victory over Chicago, he completed 30 of 35 passes for 354 yards and five touchdowns with no passes intercepted.

Brady’s .870 winning percentage at home is the highest of any starting quarterback in the Super Bowl era (minimum 50 home starts).

“Brady’s one of the most personally disciplined guys there is,” said Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the surgeon who repaired Brady’s knee. “Everything from what he eats, how he works out, how much he sleeps, where he goes, what kind of crowd he mixes with. Everything like that is geared toward success in his job. Everything is in sync.”

Each of the four quarterbacks in these two marquee games is significantly older than the typical players surrounding him. Manning is 38; Brady is 37; Palmer and Romo are 34.

“Being a successful quarterback is so multi-factorial, whereas being a great running back or defensive back is rather uni-dimensional,” said ElAttrache, chairman of the board of the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Foundation. “If you’re a running back and you have a multi-ligament injury and it takes a half-step away from you … there’s no amount of intellectual superiority you can have that can make up for that.

“But as a quarterback, if you can’t throw the hard 40-yard out on a rope, you understand defenses so well that you’ll be able to pick out your matchups so that you won’t have to throw that ball. You’ll have three other places to go. You’ll know that before the ball’s snapped.”

And that’s what we’re seeing in these four quarterbacks. They’re older, they’ve taken a beating, and — like a seasoned and wily professional golfer — they’ve found new ways to make birdie.

Manning’s return from four neck surgeries is well documented, as is the fact he’s now the NFL’s all-time leader in career touchdown passes, having eclipsed Brett Favre’s 508 in a Week 7 victory over San Francisco. Manning, who now has thrown 513, has 10 touchdowns and no passes intercepted in the last three games.

Not only does he have the NFL’s highest average passer rating this season (119.0), but also Manning added another league record. In 16 of his seasons, he has thrown at least 20 touchdown passes. He had been tied for the lead with Favre at 15 seasons.

In a training camp interview with The Times this summer, Manning was asked whether, in a strange way, he somehow benefited from the neck injury that nearly ended his career.

“I go back and forth on that,” he said. “My initial reaction is I wish it never would have happened, because then I never would have missed a season playing football …

“I think it’s strange to hear myself say, ‘Boy, I’m glad I had four neck surgeries and missed a season.’ I don’t think I can say that and really mean it. I guess what I can say is I’m pleased I was able to persevere through the situation. I’d never been through anything like that before. I’d had injuries before and I’d gotten through that.

“But until you really have something like that, you kind of say, ‘Boy, can you dig yourself out of that? Can you grind your way through it?’ Grind is the word.”