After injury, Barnes is making moves

A mix of doctors, football players and NFL personnel milled about inside of a large conference room adjacent to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

In a classic scene at February's NFL Scouting Combine, players chatted as they waited to be examined by doctors, who were busy scrutinizing each player, from the most highly regarded potential future millionaires to the longest-shot NFL hopeful.

But as one doctor posted the results of a shoulder X-ray, most of the medical eyes focused on it with interest. Here was an injury they had never seen before.

According to the doctors who performed the surgery, it had been as if Kevin Barnes were ejected from his seat in a car crash and had landed on his left shoulder. Now, about four months after his football season ended when he sustained the injury on an awkward hit on Wake Forest's D.J. Boldin, the lone indication of the damage was a tiny pin inserted by the surgeons.

Doctors flocked to the former Terp cornerback, pulling on his arms and testing his range of motion like fascinated school children.

"I was basically the spectacle of the combine, as far as defensive backs go," Barnes said. "They were just so amazed by the injury. They'd never seen it before. They were curious."

While his teammates played the season's last six games without him, Barnes put in months of rehab in hopes of proving he's finally healthy. After spending eight weeks training with Darrius Heyward-Bey and other top players at Athletes' Performance-Arizona, Barnes continued to impress at the Combine and Terp Pro Timing Day. The Glen Burnie native hopes he has done enough to warrant being selected as a high-round choice in this weekend's NFL Draft.

Scouts Inc. rates Barnes as the draft's 12th-best cornerback and projects him as a third-round draft choice. NFL.com's Gil Brandt ranks him in the 61-70 range on his "Hot 100," meaning the former Dallas Cowboys' general manage slots him as a late second or early third round selection.

"I never worried because I'm a fast healer," Barnes said during a recent stop in the Gossett Team House. "I've always stayed optimistic about it, because it was my shoulder and not my knee. It wasn't going to affect my athleticism."

But Barnes is more serious when he realizes how far he has come in a short time. It started with the hit on Boldin, which was nowhere near as violent as his early season shot on California's Jahvid Best that became a YouTube sensation.

Barnes went to the locker room during the Wake Forest game hoping to put his shoulder in a harness and get back on the field. But when the pads came off, he couldn't move his arm. That's when he realized how grave the situation was.

Doctors initially diagnosed him with a myriad of shoulder and muscle injuries and set the recovery time at five to six months, which might have doomed his pre-draft plans.

But when surgeons operated in late October, there was less damage than expected and his recovery time was reduced to two to three months.

Barnes took on the role of pseudo-coach for the rest of the season and even took the practice field in full pads briefly in Boise, Idaho, before the Terps' Humanitarian Bowl. Barnes almost intercepted the first pass thrown his way during drills, but he was quickly advised not to risk further injury.

"In my mind, he was a great help the last couple of weeks," said former center Edwin Williams, who joined Barnes at the Combine. "He picked up a clipboard and took on a needed role."

Barnes caught an early flight back from Boise to begin his draft training. At Athletes' Performance-Arizona, he worked out six days a week alongside top talents, including Baylor's Jason Smith and Wake Forest's Aaron Curry, Barnes' former elementary school classmate in North Carolina.

Dennis Logan, the strength coach for the facility's NFL Draft prep program, said Barnes never missed a workout in Arizona. Because weightlifting isn't a priority in cornerback training, Barnes was relatively uninhibited by the shoulder injury in his workouts.

Barnes' weight dipped to 173 pounds after his surgery. By the time he left Arizona, he was up to 190 pounds.

"You'd never know he was injured," Heyward-Bey said. "At first, he couldn't do a lot of the lifting stuff. But other than that, he was right in the mix."

Since then, Barnes has only boosted his stock, showcasing the size - he was measured at 6-foot-2 at the Combine and Pro Day - and speed - 4.44 40-yard dash at Pro Day - that NFL scouts covet.

Despite his inability to lift at the Combine because of the injury, those numbers, along with the top 20-yard shuttle time among Combine cornerbacks, are "really good indicators of a player's ability to be a corner," according to Brandt, who called Barnes "a good ball player."

Add in a 41 out of a possible 50 on the Wonderlic test, an amazing score on the 12-minute IQ test that Barnes said he's heard could improve his draft position by as much as half a round, and Barnes can feel good about his pre-draft work.

"It was amazing to see how he performed," Logan said of Barnes' Combine showing. "He's not a buzz name as far as defense is concerned, but the numbers speak for themselves. We could see it here, but it was even better for it to actually show up when the lights came on."

Since he was checked and X-rayed in every possible way in Indianapolis, Barnes has worked out privately for several teams, including the Philadelphia Eagles, Baltimore Ravens and Detroit Lions. Barnes said he impressed Denver Broncos' personnel by learning their entire defensive scheme in a two-hour film session.

Two weeks ago, New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick, a fellow Anne Arundel County native, personally worked out Barnes in College Park, and Barnes responded with what he called the best of his individual workouts.

Another set of X-rays that were sent to all NFL team doctors showed good results, and Barnes marveled that he fell directly on his shoulder during his Miami Dolphins' workout without incident.

Now Barnes just needs one of those teams or another he's impressed along the way to give him the call on Saturday. He said if it were up to him, he wouldn't even watch the draft, but he does believe he'll hear his name on day one, meaning he'll be selected in the first two rounds.

And six months ago, that seemed less likely than a freak shoulder injury on a routine tackle.

"It could've been a lot worse, but I feel like I appreciate the game a lot more now that I got hurt," Barnes said. "Things would be a lot less stressful, but I'm not the kind of guy who will stress myself anyway."

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