Saturday, October 09, 1999Injured Tumulty yearns to return
BY TOM GROESCHEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Bengals are getting thrashed this season, and Tom Tumulty is aching to be a part of it.
Tom Tumulty
Not the beatings, but just the feeling that he could help do something about them.
For Tumulty, the pain of watching the 0-4 Bengals play overrides his career-threatening knee injury. The fourth-year inside linebacker has been sidelined since Sept.27, 1998, when he suffered torn ligaments in his left knee in a game at Baltimore. He will miss at least two more games before he can be activated, although that is a long shot.
“Playing and losing is a lot better than not playing at all,” Tumulty said this week. “If we're going to go through some tough times, I want to go through it with them. I want to bleed with them and sweat with them.
Tumulty, a former starter, was leading the Bengals in tackles in 1998 before he was injured. He started 11 games in his most active season in 1997 and was a team leader and spokesman at the time of his injury. The earliest Tumulty could return is Week 7 against Indianapolis, from which point he has a six-week window to be activated, put on injured reserve or released.
Officially, Tumulty is on the PUP (physically unable to perform) list. But while he's in the locker room every day, working out and going to meetings, he feels like an outsider.
“This season is frustrating for everybody around here, including myself,” he said. “I can't go out there and do anything about it. That's the hard part.”
Bengals trainer Paul Sparling said Tumulty suffered the triple whammy — torn ACL, MCL and PCL. In other words, the worst possible knee injury. But Sparling said Tumulty was given a favorable report recently by Dr. James Andrews, the renowned sports doctor from Birmingham, Ala.
“I'd say he's getting very close to returning,” Sparling
said.
But Tumulty has no guarantees. The Bengals exposed him in the Cleveland expansion draft, although he was not selected. And he has seen former starters, such as fullback Brian Milne, released with injuries far less severe than his.
Bengals President Mike Brown acknowledged that Tumulty faces a hard road back.
“Before he got hurt, he was a good player,” Brown said. “Our hope is that he can get back to that.”
Even if Tumulty is cleared to play, he would face long odds of starting again. Second-year man Brian Simmons seems entrenched at Tumulty's old position, left inside linebacker.
And, at age 26, Tumulty is relatively ancient in the Bengals' youth movement.
“I'm the oldest linebacker here, and I'm a four-year guy,” he said. “Out of 10 linebackers here my rookie year (1996), I'm the last one.”
Tumulty already has beaten the odds. He was a sixth-round draftee from Pitt, an afterthought in the draft who battled his way onto the team. He's an old-school guy and a native of Pittsburgh, where football is serious business.
That is one reason why, even though he is not in uniform, he cringes at the steady wave of abuse the Bengals take from fans and media.
“I see people working hard, very hard,” he said. “I see people coming in early, leaving late, which we really haven't been doing around here, collectively. We're not reaping the rewards for the work we do put in.
“And that goes for the coaches, too. They're working their tails off.”
As is Tumulty. But after nearly 13 months of rehab, it's getting old. “I've got to get back into playing shape,” he said. “I can ride a bike from here to Columbus and do Stairmasters till the cows come home, but it's different than playing football.
“If I'm ready, I'm coming back as soon as I can. Being 0-4, I just want to get back even sooner.”
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