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Caddy Had Long Road Back

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By ROY CUMMINGS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 23, 2008

TAMPA - It happened sometime last spring, while he was running the stairs at Raymond James Stadium. That's when Cadillac Williams first realized he could once again run the field there, too.

"That's when I first saw a light at the end of the tunnel," Williams said.

Williams has been chasing that light ever since. Today he may finally reach it. If all goes as planned, the Bucs running back will suit up for the first time since he ripped his knee apart in a game against Carolina more than a year ago.

How much will he play? Who knows?

Does it really matter?

Williams is back, back playing football again. He may never again be the Williams who won league offensive rookie of the year honors four years ago, but he's back. There were plenty who wondered if he'd even make it this far.

For a while, Williams was one of them.

"When I first got hurt and started hearing what other people were saying about the injury, doubt definitely crept in," said Williams, 26. "I wondered, 'Am I ever going to play again?' That's definitely something I struggled with."

He had reason to struggle. The list of players who have played again after tearing a patellar tendon is a short one. The list of those who played as well as they did before such an injury is even shorter.

It's no wonder. The patellar tendon holds the kneecap in place. When Williams tore his at the end of an 18-yard run against the Panthers in September 2007, his kneecap wound up in his thigh.

"The pain was unbelievable," he said. "It was just agony."

Williams would soon come to know agony rather well. Despair, too. Rehabbing a torn patellar tendon will do that for you. It will force you to confront agony and despair for weeks on end.

"I don't wish that rehab on anyone," said Correll Buckhalter, the Eagles' running back who has twice torn his right patellar tendon, first in the summer of 2004, then again in the summer of 2005.

The process takes months, and they are painful, difficult, humbling months. Williams couldn't even stand up on his own, let alone walk, for the first two months.

Virtually bedridden, he developed bed sores on his back and needed help bathing and getting to the bathroom. There were some nights when he cried himself to sleep.

"Hands down the toughest time of my life," Williams said. "It was one of the lowest points in my life, too."

It would be quite a while - nearly five months - before his spirits started to rise. Even then, the rise was incremental. That 7-inch-long scar around his knee was the reason.

The surgery it represented ripped the life out Williams' legs, the right one especially. The muscles atrophied and after nearly nine months of rehab he still couldn't run without a limp. He kept chasing that light, though.

"His attitude was, 'I'm not going to let this stop me,'" Bucs strength and conditioning coach Mike Morris said. "He never backed down."

No one would have blamed him if he had. After all, the rehab was working, but where was it really getting him? Where has it gotten anyone? Sure, you can run again after tearing your patellar tendon, but try jumping and cutting.

That and the ability to burst out of a break, to explode through the line, to do the things that allow you to make football a vocation, are what most patellar tendon victims never get back.

Remember Charlie Garner, the Raiders' back who had a cup of coffee with the Bucs in 2004? He tore his patellar tendon. Afterward, he kept saying he'd be fine just as soon as he got his burst back. Problem was, he never got it back.

He's not alone. The injury has ruined the careers of just about everyone who's had it, including former Patriots running back Robert Edwards. Buckhalter is the exception.

He's not the every-down back he was before the injury, but remains an effective ball carrier and pass catcher. Maybe that's why James Andrews, the noted surgeon who repaired the knees of Buckhalter and Williams, asked Buckhalter to call Williams shortly after Williams got out of surgery.

"The main thing I told him was, 'Make sure you don't come back too early. Make sure that your leg is strong,'" Buckhalter said. "That's the mistake I made."

Williams, who first started practicing with the Bucs a month ago, believes he's followed Buckhalter's advice. At the same time, he admits he's still only a little more than midway through the process of coming back from his injury.

"I know I've still got a ways to go, because my goal is to go out there and be productive, week in and week out," Williams said. "I don't want to just show up. I want to play good."

Just playing will be a major step in the rehab process. Maybe he will take that step today. When he does, it will be an emotional moment.

"It's going to be big," he said. "It's going to be a big weight off my shoulders. Whenever it comes, I think I'll just reflect on the trials and what I went through, because it was definitely tough. They were definitely tough times."

Reporter Roy Cummings can be reached at (813) 259-7979.

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