"The first three months is mental, because you can't move or do anything," said Baltimore Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs, who suffered a torn Achilles' tendon last May, four months after he was named the NFL's defensive player of the year.
"It's extremely difficult," Suggs said Saturday. "It's definitely one of the hardest things I've had to endure in my life. But if you've got drive, you're not accepting what the world's telling you, you can do it. But it's definitely the hardest thing I've ever done."
Suggs, 30, made a remarkable recovery and was able to return for an Oct. 21 game against Houston, five months after the injury and a month ahead of an optimistic timeline. He said he wasn't the same player, though, even as his team went on to win the Super Bowl.
"The first time after the repair and rehab, there's going to be a lot of things you're not going to be able to do," he said. "Just things you took for granted, your explosion off of it. All that's going to take time to come back. I started to get my explosion a little bit toward the tail end of the season. But anybody could see that throughout the course of me playing, I was never really myself."
