One little-known side-effect of having two bad knees: you can’t limp.
JOE BARRENTINE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER FILE
Seahawks middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu started all 16 regular-season games and two playoff games despite playing on bad knees that required offseason surgery.
One little-known side-effect of having two bad knees: you can’t limp.
You just get around a lot slower. And that’s a problem if your job is playing middle linebacker in the National Football League.
So it was this season for Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu, who at times looked older than his 28 years, and less productive than during the early days of his career when he was going to three straight Pro Bowls and seemingly in on the tackle every time an opponent snapped the ball.
On top of the knees, Tatupu also suffered a concussion in the first-round playoff game against New Orleans. One little-known benefit of a concussion: you’re not clear-headed enough for a while to think about how much your knees hurt.
The topic is relevant because we received news from the team that Tatupu underwent surgery on both knees last week.
Both knees. We may presume that the double surgery was not just to take advantage of some post-holiday buy-one-get-one deal.
Through most of the season, Tatupu had light duty during the practice week to promote healing. It wasn’t clear that both knees were damaged enough to need surgical repair.
Yet he somehow managed to start all 16 regular-season and both postseason games. And he knew the scheme well enough that he could run the defense even without the normal number of practice repetitions.
He finished with 88 tackles, tied for second on the team. At times, though, he couldn’t always scrape off blocks and plug the hole, and other times when he got there, he wasn’t always able to bring the ballcarrier down as he had in the past.
The double surgery goes a long way to explaining Tatupu’s play, and serves as a good reminder to fans and critics that reduced effectiveness is not necessarily the result of lax effort or poor preparation.
This guy had to be hurting.
There’s been a great deal of rhetoric recently about whether certain NFL players are tough or not. Chicago quarterback Jay Cutler, for instance, was criticized by some players in the league for going to the bench in the NFC championship game against Green Bay because he had a sprained knee.
Here’s the best way to tell which players are tough. If they’re in the NFL, they’re tough.
You don’t get there without it. You can’t be employed to play football without it. Every player out there has played with varying degrees of pain.
It’s especially challenging for a guy like the 250-pound Tatupu who often has to square off against 300-pound guards. Yes, a savvy middleweight can get by on guts and smarts and quickness, but eventually the heavyweights will wear him down.
There are exceptions. Mike Singletary made it through 12 seasons in a Hall of Fame career for the Bears at 230 pounds.
But there is no disputing the cumulative effect of the collisions – to all body parts. Tatupu missed 11 games in 2009 with a torn pectoral.
It’s an example how quickly a team’s plan for manpower and roster-building can change.
In 2008, the Seahawks extended Tatupu’s contract through 2015. In ’09, they applied the “franchise” designation to outside linebacker Leroy Hill, and then used the No. 4 pick in the draft on outside linebacker Aaron Curry of Wake Forest. Some considered the Seahawks to have one of the best – and most expensive – linebacker crews in the league.
But Hill ran into off-field legal issues and then was put on the IR early this season. Curry has yet to display the impact expected of his high draft position, and Tatupu has battled health problems.
Fortunately for the Sea-hawks, they found a gem in undrafted free agent David Hawthorne, who has led the team in tackles the past two years, filling in for Tatupu in ’09 and Hill this season.
But it is fair to wonder how long Tatupu will hold up physically. How many more seasons can the Seahawks get out of him?
He’s a tremendously valuable team leader … a player who had an uncanny grasp of defensive schemes the minute he arrived as a rookie, and a guy who will never come up short on effort.
How well his knee repairs hold up remain an issue, of course. But whenever questions of toughness arise, nobody is going to have to wonder about Lofa Tatupu.
Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/01/30/1523384/tatupu-more-than-tough.html#ixzz1DhweoMyB
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