The blurb sounded ironic.
"The Ravens reported no injuries," said the sports page Monday after Baltimore lost to Cleveland. In a season footnoted by big-name injuries, the Ravens can make the playoffs if they beat Pittsburgh tomorrow, six other teams lose, and Halley's comet buzzes the Inner Harbor. Yes, no new injuries were reported in the Cleveland game - just pain.
Inside an NFL training room, modern sports medicine has yet to invent a treatment for game-winning touchdowns with 29 seconds left. No ankle tape, ultrasound or "Functional Integrated Strength Training" video can heal an unnecessary roughness call or late coverage. These matters require mental rehab.
But, postseason or not, body work continues to be done in the training room - 52 weeks a year for 53 men, if need be. And the man the Ravens come to see is Bill Tessendorf, head certified athletic trainer for the Baltimore Ravens. He's called Bill T. or B.T.
He's called Tess.
Tessendorf, a 53-year-old Chicago native, is a perpetually busy man with a beeper forever on his hip. He is a man of size, but says he was never good enough to play football and claims he doesn't follow the game. "I think he's pulling your leg," says head coach Brian Billick, who also says he defers to his trainer's judgment "100 percent of the time." He credits Tess for bringing Jamal Lewis and former Ravens Rod Woodson and Rob Burnett back from serious injuries. There have been many others.
Tessendorf has been in the league 30 years and came over with the Browns. In Cleveland, he had endured "The Fumble," "The Drive" and "The Interception" - three fabled losses. But he got a Super Bowl ring with the Ravens. There's actually a Hall of Fame for trainers in Athens, Ohio, and Tessendorf is in it.
He's scrubbed in during surgeries. Players on other teams routinely call him for consultations. Between tending to millionaires' season-ending injuries, Tessendorf also will put Robitussin in a player's locker and remind the rookie to follow the directions. His services are forever needed. "The best hire I ever made," team owner Art Modell says.
Injuries are part of the game, according to sports cliche No. 72. Last season, Ravens starters missed 54 games due to injuries. This season, the injured list has included such standouts as Ray Lewis, Michael McCrary, Brandon Stokley, Marques Douglas, Chris McAlister and Chris Redman. "Healthy" is a relative term in football.
In the final weeks of a season, trainers are busier than usual. Every player is banged up. Read any sports page and note the roll call of injured body parts and injuries: knee (anterior cruciate ligament or medial collateral ligament or both), shoulder (separated or dislocated), ankle sprain, back, hamstring pulls, hip pointer, clavicle, patella, stingers (aka burners: "Player notices an immediate, severe, burning pain and prickly paresthesia that radiates from the neck"), quadriceps contusions and head injuries (concussions). Robitussin doesn't help any of that.
For the Ravens, the regular season might end tomorrow, but the injury season is year-round. From a well-known linebacker to an unknown cornerback and players in between, these are Bill Tessendorf's projects. "These are my boys," he says.
His job is to bring them back, bring them back so they can play the game again.
'The peace room'
If a football team has a bedroom, it's the training room or "the peace room," as All-Pro linebacker Lewis calls the Ravens' training room in Owings Mills. Here are 10 beds, blankets, pillows, reading material (Creating a Spiritual Relationship), no reporters allowed (perhaps the best part), and assorted massage equipment to tranquilize those hammered muscles from a Sunday spent by men playing a hurtful game. The average career in the NFL lasts 3.3 years. A kicker might make it five years. A running back is lucky to finish his third season.
But there's no talk of such statistics. Do people discuss the divorce rate on their wedding day? In the Ravens' training room, conversation is pure locker room - affectionate sniping. And optimism rules: The injured will get better. They will play again. It will just take a lot of hard work. No reason to discuss crippling statistics. Other rooms in the house can be for other, harder talk.
In the Ravens' weight room, you could hang a blimp. DO ONE MORE THING, a sign blares. Visitors don't know how to get on many of the machines, much less know how to use them. Injured defensive end Michael McCrary, probably done with football, leg presses 535 pounds in howling repetitions. He lifts alone. He is on the team but not with the team; the seriously injured know the difference.
McCrary hopes, he says, to be able to walk one day with his first child, due next year. Once the Ravens' sack leader, 32-year-old McCrary needs two new knees to replace his savaged, arthritic knees. He lasted 10 years in the league; he crushed the league average. Now, he plans to order stools on wheels so he won't have to stand so much at home.
Through his eight surgeries in his career, McCrary trusted one trainer: Tess.
"I was so focused on football I wouldn't allow anything to get in my way - not even pain. You keep pushing yourself, but he never pushed me to play," Mc- Crary says. "Tess never treats you like a piece of meat."
In the training room this month, Tessendorf applies ultrasound to center Mike Flynn's knee, then wheels on his stool to another table where a linebacker flails his "walking stick" in the air like a swordsman. It's disorientating to see Ray Lewis with a "walking stick." Tessendorf ever so gently moves Lewis' shoulder, which just underwent season-ending surgery. The movement hurts - but these are the private baby steps toward the public's again seeing Lewis make 15 tackles in pick-any-game next season.
Many a man's salary - namely Lewis' - is in that flank of flesh. But Lewis trusts the trainer for every sniffle, every injury.
"He's a father to us," Lewis says.
The team's mission statement is "to win football games," which is a healthy goal. But it can be a painful thing to see in progress - this business of football, this business of men aging before their time and those telltale knee scars and atrophied calf muscles. One player's left foot in particular - namely Brandon Stokley's - looks like one of Frankenstein's tidier stitching jobs.
Stokley's season ended Nov. 10 in the Bengals game. If it's any consolation, at least the man wiggling his dormant toes is no stranger. Tessendorf and Stokley have done serious time in the training room.
It seems like it was 50 years ago Stokley had a thrilling touchdown catch in Super Bowl XXXV; these days he plays a Solitaire computer game in the training room, as he waits until Tessendorf can look at that left foot implanted with three screws. In his rookie year, Stokley suffered a dislocated shoulder and was out for the season. His offseason was spent with Tess. "He knows how to get you back," Stokley says. They will be back together in the next offseason.
"We treat 'em, but the good Lord heals them," the trainer says. He also believes in listening to the players since, he says, they know their bodies better than anyone.
Pushing 'his boys'
Another one of Tessendorf's "walking wounded" is defensive end Douglas. He continues his rehabilitation for a torn anterior cruciate ligament that blew out his season. Seven weeks out of surgery, Douglas does power squats under Tessendorf's command: "Don't hold your breath - blow it out" and "Avoid bouncing the weights" and, the ever popular, "Give me a number." He wants players to rate their last effort - 1 to 10. Douglas gives himself an 8, and the trainer adds 20 pounds to the weight machine.
Twenty-five years ago, Douglas would still be in a cast, Tessendorf says. The man would be rating his best effort with the remote control. Now, Douglas, "a player with a good burst of speed off the ball and a nonstop motor" (Ravens media guide), is on schedule to be able to play next year.
Another of Tessendorf's projects is cornerback Tom Knight.
Knight, a former Arizona Cardinal, joined the Ravens a few weeks ago. He had injured his hamstring and began rehab work with Tessendorf, who can be seen running routes with Knight on one of the Ravens' practice fields. Well, Tessendorf runs a morsel of a route - just enough to get Knight moving laterally and backpedaling. Knight says his agent had made a point of telling him the Ravens have a great training staff, headlined by Tessendorf and longtime assistant Mark Smith.
"It's work - don't get me wrong. But they'll get me right," Knight says. When he came to the team, Tessendorf helped break the ice. "Bill T. handled all my formal introductions."
It's easy for a new player or a veteran on injured reserved to feel out of the loop. They are. They can't play. They have to watch and find other ways to contribute. They spend more time with Tessendorf, so he becomes for them a living connection to the team and, sometimes, an ice-breaker.
Content in background
Bill Tessendorf, 30-year NFL veteran, is not a rah-rah guy. He's not a closet motivational speaker. He's the man on the sidelines, who usually has to be dragged out to talk to the press about someone's injury. This time, he's the story.
"Yes, Tess!" hollers Pro Bowl tight end Todd Heap, gleefully watching his trainer get media attention for a change. Tessendorf (could he be blushing?) looks up from kneading some bruised body and hollers across the training room at Heap.
"Remember, there's no 'I' in TEAM," Tessendorf says. "But there's an 'I' in TRAINER!" Everyone cracks up. Good one, Tess.
One last small thing.
Ravens long snapper Joe Maese is flat out on a table, resting a sore lower back. Tessendorf calls him Joseph. There's just something more personal about calling someone Joseph instead of Joe. It has nothing to do with sports medicine or the playoffs or a Super Bowl ring. It's about making someone feel at home or at peace.
Maese rolls off the trainer's table. Yes, he tells his trainer, the back feels better. Redman walks in and plops down, Douglas covers himself with a blanket while he ices down his knee, and there's Lewis with his shiny blue walking stick and newcomer Knight balances his lunch on a table in the training room.
These are Tessendorf's projects, his boys.