E.J. Henderson

[NeverSurrender]

yeah, he's my favorite player.

e.j. henderson's rehab from gruesome femur fracture is complete
minneapolis -- you want a good nfl story? one that doesn't involve drunk driving or performance-enhancing drug suspensions or lewd text messages?

how about e.j. henderson, the minnesota linebacker whose two interceptions of tony romo on sunday gave the vikings all the great field position they needed to beat the cowboys 24-21 in the nfl's week 6 desperation bowl?

henderson's a guy, you may or may not remember, who broke his leg last season in a dec. 6 game against the cardinals. gruesome injury. broken femur. been replayed on youtube about a quarter of a million times. they put a titanium rod in his leg and told him his rehab would take a year. it took him eight months.

sunday he picked off romo. twice.

"it's one of the best stories in this league right now," said vikings quarterback brett favre, who ironically finds himself at the center of one of the worst. "seeing him break his leg, it was such an ugly injury, and you come back to training camp and the guy's full-go in practice. you never would have known. just an amazing recovery."

henderson's proud of it, too. talking to him at his locker after the game sunday, you wouldn't have automatically assumed he'd endured more than half a year of painful rehab to get to this point. but when you started asking him about the injury and the rehab and all he had to go through...yeah, he was real happy to talk about it.

"just hard work, man," henderson said. "hard work and dedication by me and the doctors and the trainers and everybody who was involved. i mean, we wrote the book. literally, we started the first manual for femur fracture rehab. it's amazing that, in all of football, there was never anything you could look up or look back on as far as femur fracture rehab. it feels good to be the first one."

felt fantastic sunday. henderson's first interception came with 1:25 left in the first quarter. romo threw a pass that bounced off the helmet of a vikings defender, and henderson lunged and caught the ball before it hit the ground. he ran it back 10 yards to the dallas 16-yard line, and four plays later favre hit greg camarillo for a touchdown that tied the game at 7-7. the interception was henderson's first since oct. 22, 2006.

"We give him flak all the time for when was the last time he had an interception. He had two today, so that should hold him for a little while, I guess."
- Kevin Williams "We give him flak all the time for when was the last time he had an interception," Vikings defensive tackle Kevin Williams said. "He had two today, so that should hold him for a little while, I guess."

The second was the dazzler. It happened with 7:33 left in the game and the score tied at 21-21. Romo threw a third-and-two pass intended for Jason Witten, and Henderson had appeared come up to play the run. But instead he dropped into coverage, leaped into the air and got one hand on the ball before corralling it as he fell to the ground at the Dallas 30.

"He's just so savvy," Vikings coach Brad Childress said. "I know Tony didn't even see him. We had a fire zone called and he dropped underneath it from the back side and kind of cut to that. Smart, smart, smart football player and a hard-nosed player as well."

Henderson said the key to the second interception was making Romo think he was going to come up and play the run on third-and-two -- a ruse that was set up by coverages the Vikings showed on similar plays earlier in the game.

"I just think the run fake, us stepping up to the line, kind of confused him a little bit," Henderson said. "He didn't know where I was, and by the time he threw it, it was too late."

The Vikings moved the ball up to the Dallas 20 and with 4:09 left in the game kicked the field goal that would set the final score of 24-21. When it was over, there was plenty of praise to go around. But in a game in which the Cowboys outgained the Vikings 314 yards to 188, the keys were the two scoring drives that began at the Dallas 16 and the Dallas 30 -- thanks to the interceptions by E.J. Henderson.

"He's back, and he's back to what he always was," linebacker Chad Greenway said. "He's playing the way we all expect him to play, and you don't even think about it, but it's amazing considering it hasn't been that long since his injury."

The Vikings are impressed, but most of all they're just thankful to have back the guy Favre called "the quarterback of our style of defense." As for Henderson, he's happy to be playing football. And while he still hasn't seen the replay of his injury (he may be the only one), he knows how serious it is because he knows how hard it was to rehab. He takes pride in that, remember. He wrote the book.

"E.J. Henderson's Femur Fracture Rehab," Henderson said. "That's what it'll be called. Hopefully nobody else has to suffer that. But if they do, at least now they know they can come back if they work hard enough at it."

See? And you thought there weren't any more feel-good NFL stories, didn't you?