Healthy, happy Cushing shifts career into a new gear
A chance encounter with Brian Cushing two days before the start of training camp proved startling.
How can a man look so much bigger and stronger, even fitter, eight seasons into an NFL career, coming off five weeks of summer vacation?
Part of it could be explained by where Cushing was, standing at the check-out counter in a homeopathic chiropractor’s office, where he had gone to pick up a laundry list of supplements — all natural, all legal — to sustain him through the most demanding, least pleasant three weeks of the season. Perhaps more intently, with more single-minded focus than any of the other Texans, workaholic J.J. Watt included, the veteran inside linebacker and defensive captain never takes a timeout from taking care of himself.
Cushing’s body is his livelihood. He’s twice seen it broken badly, through no fault of his own. But going forward — and he gives every indication there’s lots of forward left — he’ll control what he can control, leaving nothing to chance.
“If you’re not healthy,” he said, “you don’t feel like yourself, mentally or physically.”
Today, Cushing, 29, is healthy. A little more than a week into the first Texans camp since 2012 in which he feels 100 percent like himself and 100 percent sure of himself, he’s wreaking havoc. He’s blowing up people. To quote second-
year linebacker Benardrick McKinney, “Cush loves hitting. He loves flying around.”
For the moment, his own offense hates the sight of him. He’s again a man in full, the guy teammate Kareem Jackson, a fellow former first-round draft pick, remembers from another time, before two devastating injuries to Cushing’s left knee in the 2012 and 2013 seasons sent him reeling off course.
Jackson convinced
“All you’ve got to do is look at him and see that he had a great offseason,” said Jackson, who joined the team in 2010, the year after Cushing was a rookie. “He’s definitely one of the hardest-working guys I’ve ever been around. We love him for that. It was tough for us to see him going through what he had to go through. The thing for me is, he’s not just a teammate. He’s one of my closest friends.”
As far as anyone could tell outwardly, Cushing was all there last season. He started well, finished strong and, thankfully, stayed upright. By any measure, he was again a leader on a defense that, after a halting start, might have become the NFL’s best by December, a dramatic reversal of fortune in the 30-0 playoff debacle against Kansas City notwithstanding.
But Cushing was testing the waters. He hadn’t cleared all the mind-game hurdles. He hadn’t made it from start to finish without flashes of self-doubt.
It was far better than in 2014, when, he said, “it felt like every two practices I had to get my knee drained or something done.” (And when, one poignant Monday night in Pittsburgh, he almost seemed stuck to the turf, unable to react to Steelers juking or whizzing past him.) But he needed to get a complete, normal, crisis-free season behind him.
Done.
Back on plateau
“I’m really looking forward to getting out there and just kind of taking over and dominating again,” said Cushing (6-3, 249). “I haven’t felt like that in a while, but I really feel like I can. I think I’m just returning to the level of play that I’ve been used to for a long time.”
Outside linebacker Whitney Mercilus, another former Texans top pick, played only four games with the ever relentless, sometimes reckless Cushing “1.0” four autumns ago, before Jets tackle Matt Slauson cut him down with a purposeless, blindside cut block — now, if not then, illegal — at MetLife Stadium. But Mercilus remembers enough about his then-new teammate to be convinced he’s seeing the same stuff during practice.
“There’s no question that Cush is all the way back,” Mercilus said. “He’s a guy who never gives up. You respect that a lot. He’s a different kind of character. He’s a motivator. He loves this game, and he expects the same from everybody around him. He knows the defense inside and out. He’s somebody you want to emulate.”
The torn anterior cruciate ligament Cushing suffered courtesy of Slauson was followed less than 13 months later by a torn lateral collateral ligament and cracked fibula, which happened when Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles, inexplicably leaping over a scrum at the line of scrimmage, caught him squarely on the kneecap. Although the Texans had dropped four in a row — and then lost 14 straight — Cushing remembers feeling like he was “personally at the top of my game.”
Rehab purgatory
Instead, he found himself back in rehab, spending countless hours again “in a dark place,” doing boring but essential exercises while wondering if he could pull things together a second time. This was a guy who had never spent a day injured, never mind stuck on injured reserve, before the ACL snapped. And the second trauma was worse. Greater pain. Graver doubts.
But also more perspective. Cushing believes he became a better, more wellrounded human being while grappling with uncertainties he hadn’t been forced to confront before. He admits that perhaps he’d never appreciated his physical gifts or positive temperament until he’d been stripped bare of both.
The All-American/golden boy from New Jersey via USC always loved football passionately and played accordingly, but what he’s feeling inside, in his gut, this summer takes it to a different level. Although Cushing admits he hates the training camp grind as much as anybody who’s being candid — “It’s all just speculation until we start playing games,” he said — there’s no evidence of it in his carriage or countenance on the field.
Watch him, arriving or leaving, and you can see the bounce in his step.
“I’ll walk off the field, and I’m looking forward to the next practice,” Cushing said. “I’m not worrying about my recovery or how my body is going to respond, because now I know. It’s a good feeling. It’s something I’ve worked extremely hard toward and always wanted to get back to. It’s a familiar feeling, but it was kind of taken away from me for a couple of years. I’m obviously getting healthier. I feel great, and I’m really looking forward to the season.”
O’Brien won over
Coach Bill O’Brien delights in hearing that. He didn’t know the original Texan Brian Cushing, but he can appreciate the new one.
“I love coaching the guy,” O’Brien said. “He’s a really tough, heart-andsoul type of guy. He loves football. He brings a lot of energy to the field every day. I don’t know what his secret is, but he’s a fun guy to be around.”
Again.