Panthers' Delhomme not celebrating one-year anniversary of elbow injury

By Darin Gantt - Darin Gantt

CHARLOTTE -- You could tell by the way Jake Delhomme cocked his head and screwed his face into a grimace that he didn't understand the question.

That's probably as good a sign as anything for the Carolina Panthers quarterback. He'd lost track of time and didn't realize Tuesday was a year removed from the biggest crossroads in his career.

That the anniversary of his elbow injury passed without notice should be a good sign, since it indicates how far removed he is from the problem that led to Tommy John surgery and an offseason of waiting, wondering, but mostly working.

"What anniversary?" Delhomme said. "Oh, I hadn't even thought about it."

Everyone else around him had, because they knew the state of the franchise rested largely on how he recovered from the procedure which only NFL quarterbacks Rob Johnson and Craig Erickson had ever undergone -- neither who are of Delhomme's caliber.

Through it all, Delhomme's handled his comeback like the ones he generally orchestrates in the fourth quarter -- efficiently, usually with a shrug, seeming to wonder what's the big deal.

"I don't look at it as being remarkable, I look at it as being happy to be back here fielding questions," he said. "We've talked about the surgery and coming back and things like that. My thing was, 'Hey, at least I'm getting better.'

"I can't say I've thought a whole lot about it, like 'Oh man, this is so remarkable.' No, I've trusted the trainers, the doctors, did what I was told and now I'm here."

A year ago today, there were natural worries he might not return.

On Sept. 23, 2007, he went down in a heap, sacked by Atlanta's John Abraham. Guys were grabbing at the ball, though Delhomme didn't think Abraham was the one doing the tugging. He got up, and later a short pass to Brad Hoover signaled the end of his season.

The damage was hidden underneath, and there were signals for years that something like this was possible.

"Without a doubt," Delhomme said, when asked if the blowout was inevitable. "I never MRI'd it, never did anything. But something was going to go at some point. Something was going wrong."

Panthers trainer Ryan Vermillion said there were concerns as much as three years prior, when Delhomme would come up with a sore forearm during camp. They'd wrap it, rest, ice, the usual, and he'd be back. Still, there was that nagging feeling the big one might be coming.

"We were always afraid something like that might happen down the line," Vermillion said. "But at the same time, he was playing well, going to the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl, those kinds of things. So, it wasn't like it was something that was absolutely going to happen, and he just kept going."

His ulnar collateral ligament (the one that connects the bones of the upper and lower arm) was fraying. It was snapped in two when team orthopedist Dr. Pat Connor went in to do the surgery on Oct. 18, but that didn't necessarily happen in the Atlanta game. That pain came from a tear of one of the flexor muscles in his forearm. While Connor was fixing the muscle and the ligament, he took out a bone chip and stitched up Delhomme, the half-moon scar on the inside of his right arm the last visible sign of the explosion that happened within.

The next steps were amazing.

Vermillion said Delhomme was an incredible subject throughout the process, which began with clean work from Connor during the 90-minute procedure.

"Good surgery, good tissue, good patient," Vermillion said, clinically.

It was a slow beginning, 16 weeks before he threw a football, a foam toy model. The progress was steady rather than slow, with what Vermillion called "absolutely no setbacks" -- something he credited with Delhomme's willingness to work.

"A lot of it has to do with the guy's mental state," Vermillion said. "But Jake's always been an extremely positive person, everything's always half-full. There might have been days he was tired, days the arm was sore, but he never said it."

There's also the chance now his arm's better than ever. The nature of the surgery is to tighten what had become a loose hinge, so once the healing was over, the improvement began.

Fullback Brad Hoover, who caught that last fateful pass in Atlanta, said he could tell a difference immediately when they got to training camp. His theory is the degenerative nature of the injury contributed to some of Delhomme's bad habits (he's always thrown a ball with a tail on it, tending to lead receivers high and outside).

"The last couple years, he might have floated a little bit because it was bothering him," Hoover said. "They're a little more on a line now, a little more oomph behind them. People might not see it, but we feel it when we run routes.

"He played with that elbow for three years. I can't imagine throwing with stuff going on in there. Especially being a quarterback, all that torque, trying to locate and zing balls around, when you're in all that pain."

Perhaps that's why Delhomme's so appreciative now. He's talked all year of simply being happy to play again, a natural emotion given the peril his career faced.

It's the kind of thing that probably makes him want to celebrate every day, not just when the calendar rolls around.