CHARLOTTE -- His lower leg fractured and his season over in the second quarter against Atlanta on Nov. 15, Jordan Gross knew he had to put on a brave face -- not just for his teammates, but for himself.
"Everyone hears it pop and everyone panics, so I said (to myself), 'Don't panic.' Then I rolled out, and from my calf down, (the leg) was kind of pointing to the right," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm not a doctor, but I figured it wasn't good."
He nevertheless talked with teammates, applauded the crowd as it gave him a standing ovation and kept his composure as he rode to the locker room for the X-rays that confirmed what he already sensed. By 6 p.m. that night, he was in surgery.
But there were limits to Gross's bravado in the face of injury -- which he learned four nights later, when for the first time in seven seasons with the Panthers, he was on neither the field nor the sideline when they faced the Dolphins.
"The hardest thing for Jordan was not being able to come to the game (Thursday) night," quarterback
"Early Friday morning, I got a call from him, just because it hurts. I think he said it best: 'If you guys had won by 30, I'd feel so much better right now.'"
Losing the game was bad enough. But Gross knew that seeing a team captain struggle just to stand on the sideline would have been too much for both himself and his teammates to bear.
"I couldn't stand up without it really throbbing," he said. "It would have been too much on Thursday ... It wouldn't have been good for anybody to see me struggling. I wanted to wait until everything was good."
By the weekend, he was "a million times better," and said he could have made it through a game on the sideline if the Panthers had a typical Sunday afternoon game time. A day later, he returned to the locker room. His right leg was in a cast and crutches dictated his movement, but his spirits and deadpan sense of humor were back to form.
Soon, the same will be said of his leg. The cast will come off in approximately one week, to be replaced by a protective boot. Six weeks later, he can ditch the crutches. In three months, he should be back to full health.
"It was the perfect break, because there was nothing in my ankle, no fractures down there, no ligaments or cartilage damage or anything," Gross said. "Once it heals up, they said it'll be stronger than before, because I'll have titanium in there. They said there's 100 percent recovery, and everything should be good."
The only evidence of the surgery will be the unavoidable scars and the metal that will forever rest in his right leg.
"A rod and a plate and some screws. Now I'll have some metal detector issues at the airport," he said.
For now, Gross knows he must find ways to stay involved. Sitting in meetings isn't essential; as his teammates on the active roster and practice squad gathered in the team room, he remained at his locker-room stall, admitting that he would be a "distraction" if he joined them.
"You always make fun of the IR (injured reserve) guys and say, 'They've got the best life ever,' until you're one of them," Gross said. "(Then) you're like, 'Man, it's so much easier to just be doing your job.' But it'll be all right."
"Jordan and I had a long talk about that. I think Steve (Smith) felt the same way when he was on IR," said Delhomme, who was on injured reserve for much of the 2007 season. "You feel like you're not a part of it. You're embarrassed. I think that's the biggest thing: guys get embarrassed because they get hurt, because they feel they're letting guys down because they're hurt.
"It's crushing because you feel like you let guys down. If you care about it, that's how you feel. If it's not all that important to you, you don't feel that way, but if it's important to you, it bothers you."
Being out for the season and unable to help his teammates bothers Gross, but not to the point of emotional debilitation; he is, after all, a self-described "eternal optimist."
"I've been lucky for a long time to not have anything major happen," Gross said. "I guess it's my turn. The rest of me will probably feel great come next season having a shortened year like this.
"I still feel like I have stuff to do. I don't feel like IR is a free pass to be gone. I'll try to help out as much as I can."
