Two days after Super Bowl 51, a pair of televisions in the lobby of Nike's Bo Jackson Fitness Center were showing highlights of New England's victory parade when Ifo Ekpre-Olomu walked in.



While Rob Gronkowski drained a beer and spiked the can in Boston, Ekpre-Olomu stepped onto a rain-dampened turf field in suburban Portland and laced his cleats. As Tom Brady smooched the Lombardi Trophy, Ekpre-Olomu squatted into a crouch and shuffled around highlighter-yellow cones, positioning himself for an open-field tackle against an invisible opponent.



About a million Patriots fans lined Boston's parade route. Across the country, the former Oregon Ducks standout cornerback heard just one voice when he yawned between drills.



"You need some coffee?" Alex Molden asked.



"No," Ekpre-Olomu said, tugging on his sweatshirt's hood against the rain. "I'm good."



In truth, his belly was full of cough drops, his head bleary from five hours of sleep, and his legs a little heavy from the first workout of the day he finished a couple of hours before. He could have felt better, and not for the first time. Twenty-six months ago, Ekpre-Olomu crumpled to the turf in Eugene with a dislocated left knee and ligament damage, an injury that abruptly ended his All-America career at UO. And it's been six months since he went down in Miami with a torn ACL in his right knee, which continued to stunt his start in the NFL.



On Thursday, the Dolphins waived him, the second team in as many years to do so.



Amid all this, Ekpre-Olomu's chase for his own moment in the NFL's sun has led him to the rain of the Portland area, where he launched his comeback in December. His confidence is palpable. When fully healthy, he believes he'll be far better than he was in college, when he became one of the country's top cover corners and was rated a potential first-round talent.



"I don't have any doubt," Ekpre-Olomu told The Oregonian/OregonLive, "that I will be healthy for next season."



Belief like that in the wake of two major injuries is why his agent, Ryan Williams of Athletes First, likes to call Ekpre-Olomu a "serial optimist," and his fall spent studying NFL corners on television only emboldened Ekpre-Olomu that he has been right to keep the faith.



"You see what guys can do," he said. "I mean, I know I can do a lot more than some of the guys out there playing."



Slowly, that confidence is being rewarded: Just days before he took the field at Nike, a Miami doctor who performed his latest surgery cleared Ekpre-Olomu to take part in all football activities -- giving him and his small circle of trusted trainers the green light this offseason to do anything he wants short of putting on pads and hitting.



No one is throwing a parade quite yet.



But that clearance means his comeback, like the cornerback himself, is gaining speed.

Scars tell the story

With his barrel chest and arms roped with muscles, Ekpre-Olomu looks the same now at 23 as in 2014, when his diving interception of a tipped pass sealed Oregon's win against Michigan State, sent announcer Gus Johnson screaming and propelled the Ducks on their path to the College Football Playoff.





But not all is the same. On the morning of Feb. 7, Ekpre-Olomu sits on the floor of KOR Physical Therapy in Hillsboro, where he rehabs four mornings each week. He pulls down the compression sleeves covering his legs. Four scars, from three surgeries, on two knees, emerge.



The left knee was dislocated in December 2014, when he says a UO teammate accidentally pushed him from behind as he was coming down with a ball during an interception drill; while his body moved forward, the left leg stayed in place. Within a few weeks, surgeons had cut six-inch-long vertical incisions on either side of his knee to fix his lateral collateral and medial collateral ligaments. After the leg was immobilized for two months, doctors returned for a second surgery to fix the ACL.



Ekpre-Olomu, who'd rebuffed the NFL as a junior to return for his senior season, and bought a $3 million insurance policy to protect himself from a catastrophic injury, fell to the Cleveland Browns in the seventh and final round of the 2015 NFL draft. Within a year, he had collected the full amount from a loss-of-value policy that had pegged him a first-rounder -- becoming the first college player to do so. But he also had been waived by Cleveland.



Last spring, he was signed by Miami, telling the Miami Herald his doctor had declared his left knee "perfectly fine." But it was the other one he needed to worry about.



During a special teams drill at Dolphins training camp in August, Ekpre-Olomu planted his healthy, right leg and "felt something go up my leg." He went to the sideline. A short conference with medical trainers yielded no cause for concern. A few plays later, it buckled.



"I was just like, damn, what else can I do?" he said. "I just couldn't believe that it was actually an ACL."



Jonathon Lee, a physical therapist at KOR who has worked with Ekpre-Olomu since December, said that within a year of injuring an ACL, athletes have a one-in-three chance of tearing their opposite ACL. Often, it can stem from overcompensating for the previous injury, Lee said. Add in that Ekpre-Olomu's left ankle, knee and hip were naturally stronger than those on his right, and that overcompensation could be what led to the latest knee injury with Ekpre-Olomu.



When Ekpre-Olomu called last summer to share the news of his second injury, his agent figured he'd be crestfallen.



He should've known better. Serial optimist.



"He goes, 'I'll be all right,'" Williams said. "'Let's start the grind.'"

Ifo Ekpre-Olomu's NFL comeback 32 Gallery: Ifo Ekpre-Olomu's NFL comeback

A singular focus

The grind begins in Hillsboro just after 10 a.m., with Ekpre-Olomu lying sideways on a padded table at KOR. Lee stretches and kneads his joints. Gesticulating ESPN hosts debate on a muted TV overhead while a few middle-aged clients work with other physical therapists nearby.



His routine will end roughly five hours later and seven miles east, in a Bo Jackson Fitness Center weight room at Nike. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, Ekpre-Olomu follows this two-a-day routine under the guidance of Lee, a physical therapist he calls a "game-changer" and the smartest he's ever worked with, and Molden, a former standout Oregon cornerback himself who'd injured his own ACL before his eight-year NFL career ended in 2003. Now, he's a sports performance coach at Nike.



On Wednesdays, the 5-foot-9, 190-pound Ekpre-Olomu adds in Pilates. On Fridays, a pool session soothes his joints. On Saturday, a massage.



But every day, a singular focus -- on both why he continues to play, and how he's going about ensuring he has another shot.



"At this point, it would be really hard to walk away from it if I don't feel like I'm walking away on my own terms," he said. "I love to compete, and I know I can compete at the highest level. And I'm proving it to myself that I can do certain things on the field."



Ekpre-Olomu lives in Hillsboro with his girlfriend, Kristina, and he's mostly a homebody who hangs out with his girlfriend's family. Football is a full-time job. That point was driven home by his time in Cleveland, where he watched veteran Browns corners Joe Haden and Donte Whitner as they monitored their diets and sleep and lugged around thick binders full of notes.



Even before his right ACL tear in August, Ekpre-Olomu had targeted the Portland area as his offseason base, planning to train here until players across the NFL return to work in April. He'd worked out in his native Southern California the past two seasons but wanted a program with less of an emphasis on weightlifting and more on performance. Lee and Molden were enlisted to help recapture his "edge."



"Coming to Oregon would let me just focus on football," he said. "What am I going to do when it's pouring rain? Just go home and get your body ready for the next day."



So far, those around Ekpre-Olomu have seen that work ethic rewarded.



Six months after doctors repaired Ekpre-Olomu's right ACL with a tendon from a hamstring, "he's already above and beyond where I thought he could be at," Molden said.



Lee works on improving how Ekpre-Olomu's knees handle his body's load and balance, leaving Molden to work on change-of-direction and raw power. The trainers share a common goal -- rebuild Ekpre-Olomu's muscle memory -- and his deep trust. Two months after their work together began, their conversations are flecked with medical and football jargon.



He and Molden, in particular, speak in shorthand known only to those who've played the same position and endured the same pain. They first met when Ekpre-Olomu was at Oregon and kept in touch ever since, but never worked together this closely until now. Their conversations drift from Terrell Owens' Hall of Fame snub -- "ridiculous," Ekpre-Olomu said -- to that day's chill-to-the-bone rainstorm. You don't know cold, Molden said, until you've played in Buffalo in December.



"I stood on the sidelines in Cleveland!" Ekpre-Olomu said. "The wind comes right off the lake!"



As receivers have grown, and NFL rule changes have stripped physicality from pass coverage, defensive backs have tougher jobs in today's NFL than in Molden's era. That puts a premium on a cornerback's footwork, and is why much of Ekpre-Olomu's time with Molden is devoted to simulating coverage. In the rain, he accelerates and decelerates around cones; later, he bursts off the line of scrimmage, backpedaling into a full sprint, as if covering a receiver going deep.



The "final stage" of their training together this spring will include covering a live receiver. It will probably be Molden's son, Elijah, the West Linn corner and top-ranked Oregon recruit of 2017 who grew up a fan of Ekpre-Olomu's before committing to Washington.



But there is a ways to go before then. With the exception of Minnesota Vikings running back and physical freak Adrian Peterson, who returned to the NFL less than nine months after tearing knee ligaments and led the league in rushing in 2013, most ACL recoveries take at least nine months, and even that's generally considered a best-case scenario.



"It's not good enough to be pain-free," Lee said. "It's got to be second nature."



But getting to "second nature" is an inexact timetable. Molden tore his ACL as a UO freshman in his bowl game and returned nine months later for the 1993 season opener. He admits he wasn't ready.



"I wasn't the same person," Molden said. "I played that season with a brace on. I didn't feel like myself until spring ball, 1994."



As with the recovery from any major injury, the potential of a setback is the elephant in the room. But Ekpre-Olomu says his mind is clear and his focus on moving ahead.



"Some days I almost forget, which knee did I hurt first?" he said.

Searching for his opportunity

After his rehabilitation from his first knee injury, Ekpre-Olomu often felt fresh for a few days of practice. Then, soreness and stiffness set in. This time around, with the ACL reconstruction a less-intensive surgery than his dislocation, Ekpre-Olomu believes he'll feel better, longer.



Doing so will be key to landing another opportunity in a league where non-starters have scarce chances to impress.



"The NFL is completely different than playing with college people," he said. "You don't get 100 plays at practice, some days you get seven or eight."



The season spent in Cleveland was akin to a redshirt year in college -- he spent more time studying and rehabbing than practicing. The Browns placed him on their non-football injury list, which meant his first year didn't count against his three-year rookie contract. In those cases, teams aren't obligated to pay a player's salary, but the Browns did, Williams said.



After being cut Thursday by Miami, Ekpre-Olomu went onto the waiver wire, where any of the league's 32 teams have until 1 p.m. PT Friday to claim him. Should he go unclaimed, free agency awaits.



But if his future is uncertain, his belief that he belongs is steadfast.



"I never really thought for a second, 'Well, this is the end,'" he said. "It's something I know I was born to do."



-- Andrew Greif

@andrewgreif

agreif@oregonian.com