Rehabbing for the draft

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- A therapist starts the treadmill, and Willis McGahee begins to walk, then jog. His smooth stride appears effortless, but his arms pump like pistons, and soon sweat forms on his forehead.

With the NFL draft on April 26, McGahee is racing the clock to show he'll be able to play this season.

"Amazing," gushes his agent, Drew Rosenhaus.

"Incredible, huh?" says Rosenhaus' associate, Robert Bailey.

McGahee is less impressed. The former Miami Hurricanes running back knows the treadmill is set at 4 mph, a walk-on-the-beach pace that won't get him into too many NFL end zones.

"This is like walking," he says. "I just put a little bounce into it."

Still, each stride is another step in his remarkable recovery from the ghastly Fiesta Bowl knee injury that threatened his career.

McGahee tore three ligaments in his left knee in Miami's championship game loss to Ohio State and underwent surgery Jan. 5, two days after the game. There was speculation he would never play again, and while the injury was less severe than first feared, he required full reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament.

Once projected at No. 2

Once touted as a potential No. 2 pick in the draft, he briefly considered staying at Miami for another season to nurse the knee back to health. Instead, the 21-year-old sophomore stuck with his original plan to turn pro and embarked on an arduous rehabilitation program.

Barely three months later, NFL teams say he could still be a first-round choice. Rosenhaus projects that McGahee will be taken in the first half of the opening round.

"He has been doing an incredible job as far as rehabbing," Miami Dolphins personnel chief Rick Spielman says. "If you needed a running back, he'd be worth the gamble. We're pretty satisfied with where he's at from a medical standpoint."

If healthy, McGahee could become a franchise rusher akin to his predecessor with the Hurricanes, Edgerrin James. Last year McGahee scored 28 touchdowns, rushed for 1,686 yards and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting.

"There's no question that people are more comfortable that he will be back," Tampa Bay Buccaneers general manager Rich McKay says. "The only thing about it is you cannot say with a certainty that he will be back at the same level."

Madison Avenue has decided McGahee can still become a star. Since the injury he has signed endorsement deals with Nike and Microsoft Xbox, his favorite video game.

The draft jury is still out. He'll hold a final pre-draft workout Tuesday, when he plans to run on the treadmill, ride a bike, squat, do leg presses and even sprint, Rosenhaus says.

"He will open it up," the agent says. "It's a window for all the teams to see where he's at."

McGahee says he has no doubt he'll be ready to play this fall, and his rapid recovery is just what he expected.

"I know what I can do. I know what my body can do. There's no surprise. It might be surprising to you," he says, playfully jabbing a finger at a skeptic. "But not to me."

Rosenhaus says his client will be able to take part in mini-camps this spring and be 100 percent by the start of training camp in July. Rosenhaus pledges that contract negotiations will go smoothly, saying McGahee only wants a deal commensurate with his place in the draft -- not the place he would have been taken if not for the injury.

A 50 percent discount

Should McGahee be selected midway through the first round, he can expect a signing bonus of $5 million to $7.5 million. That's half of what he might have gotten before the injury.

"At the end of the day, it won't cost him anything," Rosenhaus says. "He's going to be a dynamite star, and we're going to make every bit of it back."

Pre-draft hype notwithstanding, McGahee's recovery has exceeded everyone's expectations, except his own. When McGahee attended the NFL scouting combine six weeks after surgery, he had already discarded his crutches and walked with only a slight limp.

"Remarkable," says his therapist, Ed Garabedian, who has been working with celebrity athletes for 15 years. "Obviously, he's gifted."

It helped that the operation went well, Garabedian says, and that McGahee started immediately on rehabilitation. He comes from a family of fitness fanatics, including a brother who owns a gym, and he eagerly embraced a six-day-a-week therapy regimen.

The prolific rusher is spare with his speech. He's polite but tends to answer questions in phrases rather than sentences, volunteering little, perhaps because he's accustomed to letting his football do the talking.

But McGahee says the team that picks him will get the best running back in the draft, and he plans to quickly prove it. The injury may have saved him from being taken by the perennially woeful Detroit Lions, but McGahee says cold weather, artificial turf and a losing tradition don't faze him, and he'll play anywhere "as long as they have a football and pads."