What happened to Garry Gilliam’s left knee two seasons ago was ugly, at best.
The ACL and MCL were both torn, and the patella tendon and lateral meniscus needed to be tended to by team physician Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli as well.
Hey, at least it didn’t hurt.
“I knew something had happened,” Gilliam said Wednesday, recalling the severe knee injury from Oct. 2, 2010, suffered on kick coverage at Iowa. “But in the moment with all the adrenaline, it doesn’t hurt in the moment. It’s real fast, but I knew something had happened. I didn’t even try to get up.”
The real pain, he found out, would come later. But here Gilliam was at Wednesday’s practice, wearing a black knee brace, somewhat laboring but nevertheless out there running, cutting, blocking and catching.
“When I’m at practice or doing something, I’m not thinking about it,” Gilliam said. “But it’s there in the back of my mind. ‘Can I make this cut and go this way?’
“A lot of it is getting that out of my mind and just going with what I can trust and what I know my knee can do.”
Twenty-two games went by since Gilliam made the only catch of his career. A conversation with Sebastianelli shortly after the injury assured him it wouldn’t be his last and that this Wednesday on the practice fields adjacent to Holuba Hall would even be possible.
“I went straight to Dr. Sebastianelli and asked if I’d be able to play again,” Gilliam said. “He said, ‘Yes, you’ll be able to get back. It will be a long path.’
“So I trusted that and put my head down and kept working.”
Then came a major setback. Gilliam’s knee became infected following MCL surgery, pushing his ACL surgery back to the spring of last year, costing him the entire 2011 season and delaying his return to the field until March 26, 2012, the first day of spring practice.
So much has changed. He’s now a redshirt junior, playing a position that carries more significance in first-year coach Bill O’Brien’s offense than the old offense under Joe Paterno.
Gilliam lined up with the first-team offense Wednesday, and if you go strictly on measurables (6-foot-6, 277 pounds), he should primarily be featured as the ‘Y’ tight end in the offense, a bigger blocker who runs short and intermediate passing routes.
He hopes to talk with Patriots tight ends Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez to learn more about the offense and adjusting his routes based on defensive coverage.
“I’m obviously a little rusty,” Gilliam said. “It has been a long time since I have played football. The hardest thing is just confidence. I just have to trust that my knee is good to go.”
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