Only one thought raced through Nolan Carroll's mind: "Not again."Four years earlier, Carroll's senior season at Clay High School, southwest of Jacksonville in Green Cove Springs, ended in the second game of the season when he broke his right tibia, or shin bone.
Now here he was, a senior cornerback and captain at the University of Maryland, sitting shocked and expressionless on the Byrd Stadium turf last Sept. 12, going through a painful episode of deja vu: Broken right tibia and fibula after being inadvertently leg-whipped by teammate Derek Drummond.
Again, done for the season — in just the second game of the season .
"It was right below the place where I did it in high school," said Carroll, the Dolphins rookie cornerback who had two tackles and defended a pass in Saturday's 10-7 exhibition victory over Tampa Bay. "Both freak accidents."
The first break was painful but routine. The second almost cost him his career.
"It was a pretty graphic compound fracture," said Maryland strength and conditioning coach Dwight Galt, who aided Carroll on the field. "It didn't break through the sock, but the bulge there was pretty gross. Of his 10 teammates, five of them went over there and they said, 'Oh (shoot),' and turned around and walked away because they couldn't take it."
Instead of finishing his senior season and proving to NFL scouts he was worthy of a second-round pick, Carroll was raced to Washington Adventist Hospital for emergency surgery.
"They said I wouldn't be walking without crutches until three months after," Carroll said of doctors. "They were anticipating I'd start running by late April, May."
The Terrapins, 8-5 in 2008, collapsed to 2-10 without their leader.
"It hit everybody hard," said nose tackle Travis Ivey, who is in Dolphins camp as an undrafted free agent. "I kind of snapped, because you know, he was one of our emotional leaders, someone I looked up to."
But Carroll, whose mother was a lieutenant commander in the Navy and his father a senior master sergeant in the Air Force, "never let negative thoughts enter my head," he said.
Instead, Carroll was off crutches after just 1½ months of physical therapy.
He moved to Atlanta in December to rehab and train with Chip Smith, who helped former San Francisco 49ers running back Garrison Hearst return from a similarly gruesome ankle fracture.
"He came in and absolutely attacked workouts — six days a week, religiously," Smith said of Carroll. "It was hard work, he was in pain, but he really wanted it."
Carroll didn't participate in drills at the NFL Scouting Combine in late February but he performed at Maryland's Pro Day on March 11, running the day's fastest 40-yard dash of the day, 4.39 seconds.
Still, many NFL teams were wary of drafting him. The Dolphins brought Carroll to their training facility to check him out.
"We researched the injury, very, very thoroughly," coach Tony Sparano said.
Only after getting to know him personally, Sparano said, were the Dolphins willing to "take a stab" at Carroll in the draft, selecting him in the fifth round (145th overall) with the pick they got from the 49ers in exchange for Ted Ginn Jr.
Sparano said that, "no question," the team believes it got a steal.
"Obviously, you don't know if any of these things can re-occur," Sparano said of the injury. "But from our standpoint, we felt really good when he was there for us in the fifth round."
Although Carroll (5-feet-11, 204 pounds) played just one full season at cornerback at Maryland after switching from receiver, he has worked his way into the top-five rotation at cornerback for the Dolphins and also had a 27-yard kickoff return Saturday night. With Will Allen's recent knee surgery knocking him out for several weeks, Carroll could be the team's nickel corner right away.
Carroll admitted he was "nervous" about getting hit in his first game Saturday, and still has to pinch himself to make sure that he really is in the NFL, and not dreaming.
"It was incredible, man," Carroll said after the game. "Just being here, being a part of an NFL team, it was one of those things that didn't hit me until now."
Whatever happens in his career, Carroll has earned a lot of respect in his locker room.
"Every time I see him in the cold tub," Ivey said, "I say, 'I don't know how you did it, man.' "
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