Seattle Seahawks cornerback Walter Thurmond is using the power of positive thinking to steer him through a tough time after seeing his second football season in three years come to a premature end due to a broken leg.
"The rehab process is tedious. It's the same thing every day," Thurmond said, according to the team's official website. "Just going through the process with my knee, it seems like it never gets better. So you really have those days to where it can get stressful and it gets tiring, because you just want to get back to where you were. So you really have to overcome that and just keep going, and know what the end goal is that you want to accomplish.
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"It's like being an injured bird and just wanting to be able to fly once you get your wings healthy again."
After tearing the anterior cruciate, medial collateral and posterior cruciate ligaments in his knee as an Oregon senior in 2009, Thurmond was just starting to fly in the NFL when he suffered a second serious injury, breaking his fibula in a Week 7 loss in Cleveland.
He was replaced by Richard Sherman, who played well as Seattle's secondary rallied after losing Thurmond and starter Marcus Trufant to season-ending injuries. Now Thurmond is hoping to earn back a starting job. But first he's got to heal, and the next step in that process is running, which he won't be able to do for a couple of more weeks.
"I'm really looking forward to that -- running like I did before I got hurt," he said. "That's going to be a great accomplishment, once I get there."