RENTON — Jeremy Lane should have been on the sidelines when the decisive play of Super Bowl XLIX took place, watching in nervous anticipation as a player who stood to be one of the Seattle Seahawks’ big heroes.
Instead, Lane found himself lying groggy in bed at a Phoenix-area hospital, having just awoken from surgery on his left arm.
“When I woke up we were on the 1-yard line,” Lane recalled. “Say no more.”
Lane, whose first-quarter interception went from being the highlight of his NFL career to the lowlight, watched as Malcolm Butler picked off Russell Wilson’s pass to preserve the game for the New England Patriots, then drifted back off.
“I saw that play and I went back to sleep,” Lane said. “Then I woke up and was like, ‘Was that a dream?’ I don’t want to talk about it.”
Indeed, there’s much about that night — and the ensuing nine months — Lane would prefer to forget. But now the Seahawks cornerback is on the verge of returning from his injuries, and he’s determined to stop dwelling on past football memories and start making new ones.
“Oh man, I’m very excited, it’s been so long,” Lane said Wednesday at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, the first time he addressed the media since suffering a broken arm and torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee during the Super Bowl in February. “I think this is the longest I’ve ever been without playing football since I started. This has been a long time coming.”
Lane has been an overlooked absence on Seattle’s defense. The fourth-year pro, who was a sixth-round pick in the 2012 draft out of Northwestern State, was Seattle’s nickel cornerback last season, meaning he was brought into the game on passing downs to cover the slot receiver.
It’s an unheralded job, but one which he performed to a level that was greatly appreciated by his teammates. So much so that All-Pro corner Richard Sherman insisted Lane be included in the Sports Illustrated cover photo for the article about the Legion of Boom prior to the Super Bowl.
Therefore, the Seahawks are eager to get him back.
“He’ll add the same scrappiness he brought before,” Sherman said. “Obviously he’s experienced in the nickel spot, playing the entirety of last year when he was healthy. … He’ll make an immediate impact when he comes back.”
But it’s been a long an arduous road since Lane suffered his injuries.
What should have been Lane’s greatest moment in football turned into a moment of gruesome agony. Late in the first quarter of last season’s Super Bowl, Lane intercepted a pass from New England quarterback Tom Brady in the end zone. While returning the interception, the first of his NFL career, Lane was hit low by Patriots receiver Julian Edelman, tearing the ACL in his left knee. Then when Lane went to brace his fall he fractured both the radius and ulna in his left arm.
“I watched (the play) like 20 times,” Lane said. “I just kept thinking, ‘What could I have done better to stop that from happening?’ But it’s football.”
As if the injury wasn’t bad enough, the Patriots then targeted Lane’s replacement, Tharold Simon, with Edelman beating Simon for the decisive 3-yard touchdown catch with two minutes remaining. Then Lane had to suffer the indignity of watching the Seahawks come up just short at the end.
But the road to recovery has been equally difficult for Lane. Complications arose from the initial surgery on his arm, causing an infection.
“It was still infected from the turf and the grass and stuff from the surgery,” Lane said. “I had surgery right away when I broke my arm because it came out of the skin. I guess a couple months later they realized everything wasn’t cleaned out and wasn’t healing right. So I had to go back in and have multiple surgeries over.”
Meanwhile, Lane didn’t even realize he had a torn ACL.
“I didn’t know my ACL was torn until a month later,” Lane explained. “I came back from repairing my arm and I was like, ‘Damn, my knee is still bothering me a little bit.’ They were like, ‘It was probably just a bone contusion because that’s what got hit.’ I was like, ‘Maybe you’re right,’ because my walk started getting better. Then down the line I was like, ‘Nah, something’s not right,’ because I was grocery shopping and it kind of gave out one day. Then we went and checked it out and, ‘By the way, torn ACL.’”
It’s the type of sequence that would even draw sympathy from the biblical Job. But Lane has taken the setbacks in stride. He returned to practice for the first time Monday in a limited capacity, and now he’s on the brink of returning. He remains on Seattle’s physically-unable-to-perform list, but Seahawks coach Pete Carroll left the door open to the possibility Lane could be activated for Sunday’s crucial home game against the NFC West-leading Arizona Cardinals.
“We need to see a little bit of durability, handling the workload, handling all the movements,” Carroll said about the prospect of activating Lane. “You really can’t get it exactly the same in the workouts. He’s in great shape, he can really run like crazy right now. But we have to get all the movements, the straining, the fighting against pressure and stuff like that. He just needs to show us he’s durable and can hang in there. That’s why the day after his work is really the one that we’ll know the most. He’s going to look good, he looks great out there running around. We just have to see how he recovers.”
But Lane has already recovered from much greater hardships, and he’s eager to get back in the game.
“If they let me play this week, I’ll be ready.”
Check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/seattlesidelines, and follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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