EUGENE -- Not quite four months have passed since Pharaoh Brown was cut out of his uniform and pads on a hospital bed by doctors who were only hours from taking his lower right leg, too.

And still, the Oregon Ducks tight end stares at the area below his right knee with a disbelieving gaze, as if it shouldn't be there, as if it doesn't belong to him. But it is and it does.



"God works magic," Brown said last week.



Not quite four weeks after his third and final surgery, progress comes in the form of stiff, short steps. They belie how far he's come during an exhaustive winter.



After facing the stunning possibility of amputation in a Salt Lake City hospital, he now ambles without crutches. He rides a stationary bike and jogs -- gingerly -- on an underwater treadmill.



That he's doing any of these things at all could be cause for celebration considering that he left the Rice-Eccles Stadium field on Nov. 8 in the back of an ambulance and, unbeknownst to him, bleeding internally. That his complex recovery is somewhere in the vicinity of one month ahead of schedule, on top of it all, has left Brown far from the only person around Oregon's athletics complex with an incredulous expression.



"It's very inspiring," defensive coordinator Don Pellum said.



And it hasn't happened alone. He has been pushed along by dogged diligence from Oregon's medical and compliance staff, his own competitiveness and encouragement from thousands of strangers, some of whom see in Brown the case study of "grit."



Brown's recovery is just one of many that Oregon associate directors of athletic medicine Kevin Steil and Kim Terrell will oversee this winter, with receiver Devon Allen four weeks out of knee surgery and offensive lineman Doug Brenner recently moving about Oregon's football complex in a walking boot. But the stomach-turning nature of Brown's Nov. 8 injury, which stretched an artery in his leg, struck a chord across the country and has left many outside of Oregon's treatment center eagerly monitoring the 6-foot-6, 21-year-old junior's steady road back.



Back to what, however? To his feet? Consider it done.



To the field? Even Brown is unsure.



"People ask me am I going to play, am I going to redshirt," he said. "I mean, this is a career decision, so I want to make sure my stuff is fully healed, that I can do everything and not rush back. That's why I don't even look that long out. If I'm able to play, I'll play. If I'm not, I'm not.



"I'm not getting out there till I'm 100 percent healed and not only 100 percent healed but 100 percent in my mind that I'm healed. A lot of people get out there and are timid to cut. When I'm on the football field, I'm a different guy and I only know how to play one way -- that's fast. I play hard, real nasty. I can't take it soft. I know how I play and how I gotta be to play at that level."



In his most extensive comments about the injury to date, Brown said that though no bones were broken, two knee ligaments were torn when he fired off the line of scrimmage at the 2-yard line late that Saturday in Salt Lake City, stepped on the foot of a teammate and stepped awkwardly with his right leg to regain balance. That leg then bent so unnaturally that ESPN didn't show the replay.



What left him in the ICU of the University of Utah Hospital, however, was a stretched artery in his leg that caused internal bleeding and cut off blood flow below his right shin, he said.



Thousands watched his leg seemingly disintegrate on live television in November. Last Sunday afternoon, several thousand more watched him walk to midcourt of Matthew Knight Arena without aid, where he and the rest of the 2014 Duck football team was honored.



Less visible, however, was his journey between.

* * *

Brown's non-contact injury occurred on a play when he was meant to get all the attention. Only for a starkly different reason.



As Oregon drove in the fourth quarter toward a touchdown, Brown was substituted out of the game by tight ends coach Tom Osborne because he appeared tired, Brown said. Oregon had practiced the week prior to facing Utah a special set to find Brown for a touchdown close to the goal line, and there was confusion as to why he wasn't in. He was sent back on the field, where he hoped to catch his second touchdown of a game rapidly tipping toward Oregon's favor.



"The first play Marcus didn't throw it to me, the second play was supposed to be a touchdown to me and it was so open Marcus just ran it in," said Brown, who has described the pain as the worst of his life; observers on the field recalled hearing him scream as trainers attended to him. "That was the play. I was like, man why didn't I just stay out? So many thoughts like that go through your head. It was just a freakish night."



And a surreal one.



Brown knew it hurt, but had no clue how bad it was about to get.



He expected to join his teammates back in Eugene the following day, believing the diagnosis was limited to ligament damage. In the early morning hours, a doctor burst into his hospital room -- Brown remembers his message being so urgent that the doctor didn't even introduce himself -- to brief the tight end on the artery's precarious condition. If not corrected soon, amputation was likely, he said he was told. Brown called an Oregon medical staffer to share the news and the recommendation came quickly: Get surgery.



"That just shocked me," Brown said. "Once he said I wasn't going to be able to walk or run again I was like, all right."



He remained in Utah for four days alongside Terrell, who had flown back from Eugene on Sunday morning, and Horace Raymond, Oregon's director of player development. By mid-week, his leg was stabilized enough to allow him to fly to his hometown of Cleveland, for treatment from the Cleveland Clinic and his mother, Jeanetta Smith, a hospital nurse.



The ramifications of his injury quickly rippled beyond the tight ends depth chart.



First, he had to finish his fall academic quarter classes despite getting hurt during midterm exams. Brown said he finished with a 2.9 GPA while sometimes falling asleep during online lessons due to drowsiness from his pain medication.



"I was on a 3.0 (GPA) average so it kind of messed me up," Brown said, "but I can't be mad at a 2.9 on all them pain pills."



Brown spent nearly all of January in Cleveland preparing for his third, and final, surgery. Since returning to Eugene, he's rehabbed six days a week, three hours each day, beginning with massages to warm up the muscles around his knee, calf and ankle. His calf remains particularly "tight" because surgeons sliced through it to access his damaged artery. The rehab continues with exercises to strengthen the leg and finishes on a bike or jogging underwater.



Because of his travel and rehab, Brown chose not to take classes during Oregon's winter academic quarter.



Behind the scenes, Jody Sykes, Oregon's chief compliance officer, gathered a team to keep Brown's recovery in line with NCAA rules while he isn't enrolled.





"I have been in this business for almost 20 years and I have not had this kind of a situation," said Sykes, who worked closely with colleagues Bill Clever and Tyler Hinton to navigate NCAA policy.



NCAA athletes enrolled full-time in classes receive a scholarship check up front at the beginning of each month. Brown, however, has been reimbursed for his "actual and necessary expenses" -- rent, food, and more. He has received about 90 percent of money he'd normally get as a full-time enrolled student-athlete, Sykes said. Without taking classes, he also can't participate in "countable athletic activities" -- think of video study sessions -- either, but is permitted access to the training room and cafeteria in the Hatfield-Dowlin football complex to eat the brunch offered this quarter. (The brunch issue was one of several items Oregon clarified with the Pac-12 office).



Brown will re-enroll in spring classes without any issue, he and Oregon said, thanks to the NCAA's medical absence waiver, which applies when a school can prove that its player cannot attend school "as a result of an incapacitating physical injury or illness."



"For medical reasons it was better for Pharaoh not to complete winter term," Sykes said. "(The waiver) allows us to apply credit, like phantom credits, that continue to keep him on track academically and he makes those up down the line. ... The situation is so rare and unique that we're happy to jump through the hoops to help him. He's still part of the family and the team."

* * *

Amid the tedium of his recovery and red tape of the NCAA rulebook, reminders of normalcy were fleeting for Brown. While in the hospital in Salt Lake City, he didn't eat for four days as he went in and out of surgery and tests. When he arrived home in Cleveland around midnight mid-week, he asked a friend to drive him toward the comfort of a favorite late-night fried chicken joint, his first proper meal since the afternoon before the game at Utah.



But like Brown's latest careful strides, signs of life as it once was now are slowly returning more frequently.



"I'm seeing it coming back," Brown said. "I'm seeing my running form coming back. That just shows me that I'm going to be able to come back to where I was if I just trust the process."



The stunned faces Brown witnessed during his recovery at Oregon and the Cleveland Clinic have a habit of following him around now that he is upright, mobile and back on campus. On a recent weekend in Eugene, three weeks after his last surgery, Brown was healthy enough to celebrate a teammate's birthday at a local restaurant and bar.



"People were like, 'I won't lie, I said a prayer about you,' " Brown said, shaking his head. "And that's just somebody at the bar I really don't know! ... People actually genuinely care around here."



Brown's image has gone viral before when, in December 2013, he was suspended for Oregon's Alamo Bowl appearance for his role in a campus snowball fight, the video of which has been watched 4.7 million times. If the tenor of that fallout was for many to call for his banishment from the program, the aftermath of his injury has resulted in thousands wondering instead how quickly he can return.



By his estimation, he received more than 1,000 pieces of fan mail. That doesn't count the arrivals of the stray teddy bears sent by fans, nor the hundreds of get-well social media messages, nor the long conversations he shared with friends ranging from roommate Dwayne Stanford to Cleveland friend Travis Kelce, an NFL tight end with Kansas City, nor the book of spiritual quotes he referenced almost daily when his hospital rooms began "closing in on me."



"I read every last one of them," he said of the letters.



With extra free time, he hopes to repay the well-wishes.



In late February, he plans to visit the fifth-grade classroom of Eva La Mar of Springfield's Riverbend Elementary. Of the letters he received, about 30 came from her students, who were studying grit and perseverance at the time of Brown's injury.



"It's a very tough concept to explain to a 10- and 11-year old, but a topic so key to success in life," La Mar, who has taught at Riverbend for a decade, wrote in a Nov. 15 letter to Brown.



The teacher and her students were under no illusions Brown would answer once they were delivered to Oregon's athletic department. Some asked her what the point was. She viewed it as a lesson that words of encouragement -- even from a fifth-grader -- can carry meaning.



"I asked them, what kind of grit would you have to find if you trained for your whole life for this, to get to that point, and what would it feel like if everything was brought to a screaming halt?" said La Mar, who was coming back from a long class field trip on Feb. 13 when she learned Brown wanted to visit his fifth-grade cheerleaders in person.



"What could we possibly offer him? Sometimes they feel powerless and sometimes they have to feel the power of words. They realized he might value what they had to offer. It's not something you buy, you don't have to go buy a fancy car, your words have the power to help shape someone's destiny or get through a difficult time. I wanted them to see their own power, and see their own meaning."



His actions have spoken loudest lately.



Two weeks ago, he misheard a command by Terrell -- "Miss Kim" to Brown -- during a rehab session. Standing tall, he thought she'd asked him to step up onto a short box off his right foot. Placing all his weight onto his recovering leg, he followed suit.



His leg held. Terrell's expression, as Brown remembers it, did not.



"She was shocked," Brown said.



The same could be said for the tight end himself.



"I'm surprising myself," he said. "You don't really know what you can do till you get put through that. You really don't know how strong you are."



-- Andrew Greif

agreif@oregonian.com

503-221-8100

@andrewgreif