Al Harris determined to be ready by Week 1

[chuckleslove]

http://www.espnmilwaukee.com/includes/n ... tion_id=40

Harris vows to be ready for opening day
By JASON WILDE
jwilde@espnwisconsin.com

GREEN BAY – For now, all we have is his word. Well, his word – and about a dozen YouTube videos on NationalFootballPost.com.

“The proof,” Al Harris said, “is coming soon.”

Yes, he is 35 years old. Yes, he is coming off a near-catastrophic knee injury – a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee suffered Nov. 22 and required reconstructive surgery eight days later. And yes, he’s still committed to a timeline that seems, well, ambitious, to be polite. (Unrealistic might be the less cordial adjective there.)

Nevertheless, the Green Bay Packers’ two-time Pro Bowl cornerback will attend this week’s organized team activity practices to continue his rehabilitation with his goal very clear: Be ready for the Sept. 12 regular-season opener at Philadelphia.

“I'm going to play. I'm going to play. When the real bullets fire, I will be out there on the right corner,” Harris said during an interview last week on Green & Gold Today on ESPNMilwaukee.com and ESPNMadison.com. (You can listen to the interview here.) “I have no doubt in my mind at all. The way my rehab's going ... I have no doubt in my mind at all that I'll be back for the season -- and for training camp.”

Not long after Harris, who turned 35 on Dec. 7 and has vowed to play until he’s 40, suffered his torn ACL against the San Francisco 49ers at Lambeau Field, he vowed to return to action in six months. Tuesday will be the first practice of OTAs – and just short of the sixth-month mark – and while he won’t be practicing, he still believes he’ll be ready sometime in camp, which kicks off in late July.

For comparison’s sake, right tackle Mark Tauscher suffered his second torn left ACL on Dec. 7, 2008, underwent surgery on Jan. 11, 2009 and wasn’t re-signed by the Packers until Oct. 12 of last year, returning to the field two weeks later. Inside linebacker Nick Barnett tore the ACL in his right knee on Nov. 9, 2008, underwent surgery on Nov. 20, 2008, wasn’t cleared to practice during training camp last summer until Aug. 17 and didn’t make his preseason debut until the exhibition finale on Sept. 3. He was then limited in his number of snaps for the first half of the season.

At the NFL Meetings in Orlando, Fla., in March, coach Mike McCarthy said Harris’ comeback schedule and Tauscher’s were “probably fair to compare time-frame wise,” and he later acknowledged that Harris could miss training camp and start the season on the physically unable to perform list, meaning he’d miss the first six weeks of regular-season play.

"There's definitely options there," McCarthy said at the time. "We'll look at all that."

Harris, though, is having none of it.

“Rehab is great. Everything is going good. God's been good to me,” said Harris, who has been rehabbing in his native Florida but will be in Green Bay for the next several weeks working with the team’s medical and training staffs, led by orthopedic surgeon Patrick McKenzie. “Right now I'm about 3 degrees from having full flexion, full range of motion, so that's great. Functionally, it's been outstanding, the functional movement, doing drills and things like that. I really have to work on strengthening my leg and just getting back into football form and the confidence of playing and cutting on my left knee.

“There's really not a timeline you can go off of because every guy's different, but for the amount of damage that I did to my knee, I'm way ahead of schedule. Normally this is the type of injury that they would tell you, 'You know, you should probably hang it up.' But being that there was no previous injury to the knee, once Pat went inside and saw that the knee was in good condition, he didn't see a reason why I couldn't come back and play.”

By his own admission, Harris’ comeback did not begin well.

A club source said the severity of Harris’ injury was one of the worst McKenzie has ever seen. Harris ended up having to have a post-surgical procedure in which he was put under anesthesia so McKenzie could move and stretch his knee to accelerate the healing process. He also admitted to being depressed after the injury, shutting out the outside world to the point that McCarthy went to his house to check on him.

Harris, who played in 182 of a possible 186 regular-season games during his career before tearing his ACL, didn’t know how to handle the injury mentally or emotionally. After all, this was a guy who suffered a dislocated elbow in the 2007 season opener – and didn’t miss a game – and a guy who missed just four games with a lacerated spleen in 2008, coming back to play in the final eight games after doctors had told him his season was over.

“At first, there were (doubts),” Harris said. “The training staff in Green Bay was awesome -- Bryan Engel, Nate Weir, Pepper (Burruss), Pat McKenzie, Mike (McCarthy) ... everybody over there was good about keeping my head above water. Because it gets depressing being that you've done something for so long and now you can't do it. And it's not because you don't want to -- it's because physically, you're not able to.

“Early on, they kept my head up. Watching the guys play and talking to them, they would call and check up on me, that kept me upbeat. Once I started moving around and was able to work out, once the ball was in my court and it was up to me and God to get back, (I was OK). If working is going to get me back, then I know I'll be back because I can work through whatever.”

Harris admitted that it was difficult to watch the Packers’ playoff loss at Arizona on Jan. 10, when Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner shredded the Packers’ pass defense (29 of 33, 379 yards, five touchdowns, no interceptions, 154.1 passer rating) in Green Bay’s 51-45 overtime loss in the NFC Wild Card round. Thrilled to be playing in new defensive coordinator Dom Capers’ 3-4 pressure scheme and mindful of the coverage he, Charles Woodson and Tramon Williams provided as the defense’s top three cover men, Harris said he felt his injury changed the way the defense played down the stretch and in the postseason.

“It's hard to watch when you're so used to playing and in so many years, you hadn't missed a Sunday, and now you know you're going to miss the rest of the season. It gets hard,” Harris said. “I think I could've helped, especially in the Arizona game. But things happen. Things happen in this game. I can't say if I'd have been in there, we'd have been in the Super Bowl. But I know if we had our top three corners out there -- not to discredit the other guys out there -- but Dom probably could have released the hounds a little bit more.

“Who knows how that would have played out? It hurts when you lose your guys who have been cohesive and are accustomed to playing with each other -- the continuity and the camaraderie isn't the same if you have different guys out there.”

That’s why Harris plans on being out there again when the season starts – and playing for a long time.

“As long as they allow me to play, I'm going to play,” Harris said. “As long as my body can hold up and I can compete at the level that's required, I'm going to be out there playing.”

Listen to Jason Wilde every weekday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on “Green & Gold Today,” and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jasonjwilde.

[chuckleslove]

Will be interesting to see if he can accomplish this goal of his. I've always thought him to be an extreme workout guy who goes the extra mile and also one tough bastard(based on the spleen/dislocated elbow and such as mentioned in the article). I wouldn't count him out but I can't honestly say I'm as optimistic as he is.

[zmanishere11]

I'm actually hoping they either start him out the first few games as the 4th or 5th back, with the hope of easing him back into the starting lineup if he proves he's healthy.

The first part of our year this season isn't that tough - would be nice to have a healthy harris around week 6 though.