Recovery Has Been Slow, but Rams’ Hawkins Coming Around
To date, Bill Hawkins’ greatest moment as a Ram probably came Saturday, almost two months before the season opener, in front of a dozen spectators, tops. He knocked around the blocking sled at Rams Park like it was standing still. OK, it was. But when he sprang from his three-point stance his left leg actually joined the party. Later, there was a quiet celebration.
“Today was my best day, by far,” Hawkins said later. “It (his leg) didn’t feel like a string of spaghetti hanging off my left side.”
Food for thought, considering the Rams are counting on first-round things from their defensive end and top choice of 1989. Hawkins wasn’t so sure what he would bring to the field this year until, well, a few hours ago.
On Dec. 11, just as he appeared ready to silence critics who had waited impatiently for his first NFL sack, Hawkins collapsed in a fourth-quarter heap against San Francisco, after partially tearing ligaments in his left knee. It was surgically repaired three days later.
That was then, though, this is now. Why was Hawkins, the team’s biggest pass-rushing hope on the line since Jack Youngblood, still limping around in July?
Hawkins, too, wondered what had become of the miracles of modern medicine and rehabilitation. He’d never been injured before, unless you count contusions and concussions. Hawkins doesn’t.
“Concussions are nothing,” he said.
So what weren’t the doctors telling him?
“The knee took a long time to respond,” Hawkins said. “Gie (Strength coach Garrett Giemont) was saying, ‘No problem, no problem.’ But I don’t think it was three weeks ago that I could barely come out of a stance. Maybe a month. I was worried. Giemont kept assuring me, but I would be thinking, ‘I can’t come out of my stance!’ ”
Giemont tried explaining that there was a distinct difference between a knee that bends well enough to pick up the newspaper and one that bends well enough to pick up a quarterback.
“If he worked at IBM, he’d be out of our clinic,” Giemont said, “but we’re talking about a football rehabilitation. . . . It’s getting him prepared to get back to playing in the NFL.”
Giemont said he understands Hawkins’ concerns because it’s the player’s first serious injury.
“When you haven’t been hurt, it’s like going down to the beach and putting your toe in the water,” he said. “What do you do from there?”
The coaches are handling Hawkins with care until early August, when they plan to turn him loose in full-contact drills. If they’re secretly worried about his knee, they’re all poker faces.
“It’s not a recurring injury,” Rams Coach John Robinson said. “What he’s building up is strength. We don’t have a wounded guy.”
Instead, the Rams are drawing up all sorts of new defensive schemes with Hawkins in mind. This season, the team plans to pair him with linebacker Kevin Greene on early downs, on the weak side of scrimmage, the side opposite the offense’s tight end.
It will mean less responsibility for stopping the run and more on rushing the quarterback.
“I can’t wait to play it,” Hawkins said. “I just cannot wait. This is going to be fun. True blue fun. It’ll be like what we used to do back in school.’
That would be the University of Miami, where Hawkins emerged as the 21st pick in the first round in 1989. Slowed by a late signing, Hawkins didn’t turn many heads with the Rams last season, although he’d made considerable progress by December. He finished the season with 11 tackles and no sacks in 13 games.
Hawkins said he doesn’t feel pressure to perform to the expectations of a former first-rounder, but promises that he will.
“Nobody wants me to play well more than I do,” he said. “If I’m not good enough to play, I won’t consider myself a waste. If I’m trying my hardest, and I don’t produce, then it wasn’t my fault. But I know that I can produce, and I will.”
Hawkins said he took to heart some early advice from Giemont, whom he would soon get to know well on the long road through rehabilitation.
“When I first got here, Gie took me aside and said, ‘This isn’t college, this isn’t high school, this is a career,’ ” Hawkins recalled. “ ‘You have your ups and downs. Hopefully, you’ll be here in 10 years.’ And I took to that.”
