Joint Return

Gruesome as it may be, the videotape is somehow uplifting to Robert Edwards. The Miami Dolphin running back used to slip it into his VCR whenever he was feeling especially low.

It brought him back to that fateful day on Waikiki Beach three years ago, when his potential seemed as boundless as those impossibly blue skies. He was playing four-on-four flag football in the sand that day, in a game pitting the best of the NFL rookie class, and the game was televised as part of the Pro Bowl festivities.

On the most innocuous of plays, there was a horrifying twist.

Edwards, then a rising star with New England, leaped to swat down a pass and landed wrong. He collapsed in a heap, his left leg a pretzel.

“The bottom of my leg went one way and the top went another,” recalled Edwards, 27. “I grabbed my leg, but the bottom was just swinging from side to side. I knew I was hurt; I didn’t know how bad.”

Edwards had suffered a knee injury so severe that doctors considered amputating the lower half of his left leg. At one point, the trauma was life-threatening for the running back from the University of Georgia who had taken the league by storm as a rookie, rushing for 1,115 yards and nine touchdowns.

No one had any idea the injury was so severe, of course, as Edwards lay in the sand with what looked to be a sprained ankle. But Raider cornerback Charles Woodson, who had jumped with Edwards to defend against the pass, was close enough to know it was far worse than a simple sprain.

“I looked at his knee, and I was just in shock,” Woodson said. “I just got up, dusted myself off, and was asking myself if that really happened. I just looked down on the ground and he was hurt real bad. I hated for that to happen to Robert.”

The injury was called a “knee dislocation,” although that term seems far too tame. Three of the four ligaments in Edwards’ left knee had snapped. Worse, his peroneal nerve was stretched, which was why his leg was flopping around, and his popliteal artery, which supplies blood to the lower leg, was sliced.

“It looked like someone just threw a hand grenade in there,” Edwards’ surgeon, Dean Soto, told ESPN. “It was a devastating injury. At that point, I was much more concerned with saving his leg than his football career. We figured, ‘Well, he might be able to walk with a cane someday.’ That was the upside.”

The quick thinking of James Scoggin, the on-site orthopedist at that flag football game, probably saved Edwards’ leg. Scoggin assessed the injury, then cleaned off a buffet table under a food tent so the player could be placed on a makeshift gurney. He called for an ambulance, which arrived no more than 15 minutes later, and ensured that Edwards was in surgery within two hours. Time was of the essence.

(Seven months after the Edwards episode, UC Davis running back Sam Paneno suffered a dislocated right knee in a game at Western Oregon and waited seven hours before undergoing surgery. By that time, it was too late, and his leg had to be amputated below the knee.)

All this seems like a different lifetime to Edwards, who made his triumphant return in a 49-21 trouncing of the Detroit Lions last Sunday, scoring two touchdowns, rushing for 20 yards in four carries and catching four passes for 38 yards. That’s why he keeps the Hawaii videotape within reach.

“When I got down or felt discouraged, I used to watch it to increase my confidence, just my morale,” he said. “It just let me know that I could have been way worse off.”

Edwards returned to his alma mater to do his rehabilitation, and celebrated each incremental triumph, such as the day he was able to wiggle his toes for the first time. The injury occurred Feb. 5, 1999, and by that summer he was already off crutches--a year ahead of what doctors had thought was a reasonable time schedule.

Still, he was far from returning to football. He spent 18 months lifting weights, riding a bike, working out in a pool, restoring not only his strength but his confidence in his leg. Then he moved to New Orleans, where he trained with renowned specialist Tom Shaw, spending a year essentially learning to run again. All the while, Edwards stayed focused on football, determined to return.

“I hadn’t thought about [a contingency plan],” he said. “If I had started planning for life after football, then it would have clouded my judgment on me coming back. I wanted to keep everything positive and focused on getting back in the NFL.”

Eventually, he did. The Patriots had him in training camp last summer and it looked as if he would make the team. Coach Bill Belichick called him “an inspiration to us all,” and Edwards came back faster and more agile than before his injury.

“We’d do single-leg jumps,” said Patriot safety Tebucky Jones, who, along with Edwards, was one of New England’s first-round picks in 1998. “With that leg he hurt, he was jumping higher than everybody on the team. So he got that leg real strong. Just by seeing how hard he was working out, I knew he was coming back. He looked just like us out there. The old Robert.”

Maybe so, but Edwards was slowed by nagging injuries unrelated to his reconstructed knee. A groin pull kept him on the sideline for most of the exhibition season, and the Patriots eventually let him go, choosing to go with Antowain Smith, a free agent from Buffalo who later played a big part in their Super Bowl run.

“I may be speaking out of line, but I don’t know how Belichick [thinks],” Edwards said. “He wasn’t the coach who brought me in. He wasn’t there my rookie year. He doesn’t really understand me. I never got a chance to show what I could do. When I got healthy enough, they cut me. I was denied a chance, I guess, because they had already made up their mind.”

Eventually, Edwards got a second chance, this time with the Dolphins, who already had signed Ricky Williams to be their No. 1 back. Clearly, Edwards is making the most of this opportunity and last week received a game ball for his showing against the Lions.

He plans to display that memento prominently in his home.

“I want to show it to people so I can tell my story,” he said. “It’s kind of an emblem of where I was and how far I’ve come.”

In with the game ball, out with the videotape.