Good luck Tedy

I admire Tedy Bruschi's courage. He is coming back to football eight months after suffering a mild stroke.

A side note- The image I probably remember best from the last Super Bowl broadcast wasn't a play from the game but one of Bruschi playing with his young sons some time before the game. Those boys have a remarkable father.

Open Post- Jo's Cafe

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Tedy Bruschi is ready to play football again, just eight months after a mild stroke left him unsure whether his life would ever return to normal.

The Patriots linebacker said he'll practice with the team Wednesday after doctors cleared him. Just 10 days before the stroke, Bruschi intercepted a pass in New England's second straight Super Bowl victory last Feb. 6.

"I came to the point where they tell me I can play. I feel like I can play. Shoot, I know I can play," Bruschi said Monday. "So let's just play."

Coach Bill Belichick will decide when to use him in a game, but Bruschi said he has no doubt it will be this season. Belichick said it's possible Bruschi will play in the Patriots' next game against Buffalo on Oct. 30 after a bye next weekend.

"Tedy's come a long way," Belichick said on his regular Monday appearance on WEEI radio. "He looks pretty normal to me. So it's great to see him just acting and carrying himself that way.

That's the Tedy Bruschi we all know and love."

Bruschi, the emotional and tactical leader of the defense, said he isn't returning because the Patriots are struggling. And it's not because his hunger to play needs feeding or his ego demands massaging, he said.

In the early days after the stroke, one of his biggest concerns was "would I ever see again?"

So the decision to return is something the 32-year-old defensive captain and father of three young sons didn't make lightly.

"We've made sure," a relaxed Bruschi said in his first news conference after declining interview requests since the stroke. "We've checked and checked and checked and, OK, let's check another time because we wanted to be sure.

"I'm not just doing this just because I just want to play," he added. "I mean, come on. I lost my sight. One morning, one day you wake up and you can't see your sons very clearly anymore because you've had a stroke. You can't walk. You can't walk write."

Gradually, he and his wife, Heidi — "what husband would just do this on his own?" he said — came to the realization that he was ready to practice.

"There were times, in my mind, I thought I was done," Bruschi said. "If I could express to you what this means to me (to return) I would, but I don't know if I really can."