Columns

Hoping for Simms may be grasping at straws

By JOHN ROMANO, Times Columnist
Published October 11, 2007

TAMPA

It is the middle of the day in the middle of the week, and a solitary jersey dangles from a lone hanger. Here, in the far corner of the Buccaneers locker room, is where you find Chris Simms' career hanging in the balance.

Is he coming, or is he going? Are his best days still ahead, or already behind? And how much faith do the Bucs still have in him, and he in them?

The questions linger today, mostly without answers. All we know for sure is that Simms' career just grew shorter by another season.

By officially putting Simms, 27, on injured reserve Wednesday, the Bucs gave up the charade that he was recovered from the splenectomy that is now more than 54 weeks in the past.

It is an admission a long time in coming. The team refused to acknowledge it in training camp when general manager Bruce Allen claimed "health is not an issue." They refused to acknowledge it when final cuts were made and coach Jon Gruden agreed it was unprecedented to keep four quarterbacks on the roster.

The Bucs did not make this admission until Michael Pittman turned his ankle, and the team was faced with cluttering the roster with both a quarterback and a running back not healthy enough to play.

It'd be nice to know why the front office felt the need to deceive its fans for so long, but that's an issue for another day. It'd be interesting to know whether other NFL teams think the Bucs fudged by failing to list Simms on a single injury report before shifting him to IR, but that is also a question for down the road.

Today, the concern is for Simms' career and his place in Tampa Bay.

The optimist in us would like to believe Simms is simply continuing down a necessary road to recovery. Splenectomy does not fall under the norm of football injuries, and so the timing of Simms' return has been guesswork.

But, clearly, the Bucs expected him to be healthy by now. Otherwise, the team would not have agreed to hand over a reported $5-million in bonus and salary to Simms this season.

You should know, that's more money than a lot of NFL quarterbacks make. It's a better payday than most of Simms' teammates. It's a healthy chunk of the salary cap and, I would bet, a painful debit from the Glazers' bank account.

The point is not that the Bucs wasted the money, but that they obviously assumed Simms would be healthy enough to earn his keep. And that's what makes this week's decision so troubling.

If it has already taken Simms longer than expected to get back to normal, how far of a leap is it to wonder if he will ever be the same quarterback?

On the first day of the rest of his lost season, Simms was nowhere to be found during the open locker room period on Wednesday. That's not unusual for a player on IR. And it's certainly understandable for a player who was not happy about being put back on the shelf until 2008.

So we were left to wonder about the kind of things that occupy a young athlete's mind.

To wonder whether, in the quiet of a night, he is kept awake by the frustrations of his health. Or if he is troubled by anger over his fate. Worse yet, if he is plagued by doubts of the future.

It would only be natural if he were. An athlete's time is limited, and every day missed should be a day mourned.

Simms has felt a disconnect from his body for quite some time, and that has to be infuriating. His mind is ready, his heart is willing, but his body is still not responding.

Maybe the intrusive nature of the surgery - the amount of nerves and muscle involved - simply requires more healing than Simms and the Bucs anticipated. That's your best-case scenario.

But it still opens a whole new set of questions for next year and beyond.

Can the Bucs afford to count on Simms as a potential starter or the No. 2 quarterback in 2008, because they will certainly be paying him as if he were. Or should they return to the open market to find a veteran to back up Jeff Garcia?

And is there any chance the Bucs could trade Simms, or would it be impossible given his recent medical history? I would think no team would be willing to take that risk without at least seeing Simms perform in the preseason.

The best guess is that Simms is back in training camp with the Bucs next season. They've paid him far too much money to prematurely cut him loose, and his health is too uncertain to get any value in return.

And so the only alternative now is to hope and wait.

Hope for the best, and wait for the day when that jersey comes off the hanger.

John Romano can be reached at romano@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 10, 2007, 22:03:45]