All last season, Brian Cushing tried to tell people he was fine.
The film showed that he wasn’t.
The Texans linebacker battled knee problems last year after tearing his ACL in 2012, along with surgery to repair a broken wrist. He hopes the problems are behind him, and the Texans don’t have to limit his snaps like last year.
“There’s a different mindset when you go out onto the field and you know you’re 100 percent and you know you’re going to take over a game,” Cushing said, via Tania Ganguli of ESPN.com. “And there’s where you know you’re probably going to be limited, and it’s tough. The worst feeling in the world is being on the sideline. There was a good amount of time during critical games last year I was [on the sideline]. And sometimes not even playing, missing two games. As a captain and a guy who’s been here for a while, I consider myself a big impact player.
“To get that taken away from you is kind of an empty feeling. But it’s not forever.”
Cushing called the knee problems that stemmed from his torn ACL “the hardest part of my caerer,” and said that at 28, he feels like he’s still in his prime. At the same time, he admitted that he might have been trying to convince himself he was fine last year, when he clearly wasn’t.
“I want to tell myself I’m all right,” he said. “I believe in a lot of positive energy and not believing that I’m hurt or banged up and pushing through things. I consider myself a pretty tough guy, I can handle a lot of things. But you know, I was obviously hurt in more than one area of my body. I didn’t want to complain about it. I didn’t want to complain about it or make any excuses.”
If the Texans can keep Cushing and Jadeveon Clowney well, they have a chance to have an incredible defense, with the steady excellence of J.J. Watt in front of them. But so far, they haven’t been able to enjoy that.
