Stem cells, hyperbaric chambers and Aaron Rodgers. How Jake Haener got back on the field

When Fresno State quarterback Jake Haener takes his first snap in the Mountain West Conference championship game on Saturday at Boise State, it will be his 333rd since returning from a right ankle injury and 333 more than he was told that he would get in this, his final year of college football.

Haener was done. His season was over.

This is September, three days after he was carted off the field in the third quarter of a loss at USC. He had an X-ray that night at the stadium, the initial diagnosis a high ankle sprain. He’d be out three weeks, maybe four. That’s what everyone thought. They talked about surgery, a procedure called a tightrope, to stabilize the ankle. Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa had one when he was at Alabama in 2019. He was back in three weeks. But after returning to Fresno, Haener had a more thorough exam and an MRI. It confirmed he sprained three of the four major ligaments in the ankle, but also showed a fracture of the malleolus, the bone on the outside of the ankle joint.

He has a photo of it on his phone.

It is not a small crack.

It is unmistakable; a jagged, dark line about 2 centimeters long.

It was a significant injury and if there was good news at the time it was that the bone was not displaced, not broken in two. But it was a 10- to 12-week recovery. That’s what he was told. The recommendation was to repair the ankle surgically and that would be it. His final season, his shot at leading the Bulldogs to a Mountain West championship, was over right there and it hit very hard.

“He was in tears,” said Ryan Haener, Jake’s father. “He has worked since he was 8 years old to have this opportunity to win a championship, to lead a team and go to the NFL and everything before him was just kind of dashed.”

Haener, who had lit up the Mountain West since transferring to Fresno State from Washington, throwing for 300 or more yards 18 times in his 27 starts, was more blunt. “I was bawling my eyes out,” he said.

FROM OUT FOR THE SEASON TO OUT ON THE FIELD

Haener was back on the football field against San Diego State on Oct. 29, just 39 days later.

The Bulldogs quarterback had proven his mettle a year earlier, taking a pounding while leading the Bulldogs to a 10-3 record. He played through a hip injury, and an assortment of bumps and bruises, some worse than others. One week, he left a Thursday practice on a cart after taking an inadvertent hit in a team period and still was on the field on Saturday. He was sacked 25 times during the year, and hit about twice as many times. But he hadn’t broken any bones in 2021.

The what, when, why and how he made it back to the football field so quickly after he was ruled out for this season came from all over; from teammates, the Fresno State training staff and medical personnel, athletics director Terry Tumey and a coach who has a direct line to an All-Pro quarterback.

After the diagnosis, and the shock, Haener and his father were in a meeting that September afternoon with Tumey and Tedford in the coach’s office on the second floor of the Duncan Building.

The mood: cloudy, at best. But they all had shifted gears. “At that point in time, honestly, it wasn’t about our football season,” Tumey said. “It was really all about how to make sure that this amazingly talented individual was going to be able to improve and continue to pursue not only his career as a college athlete, but his aspirations post-college, and we wanted to make sure that we did everything we could to ensure he would be able to do that.

“That was our goal, to make sure we were going to be able to do the best for him.”

They mulled surgery, and their options, and Tedford picked up his phone. He called Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who he had coached at Cal. One of the top foot and ankle specialists in the country, Dr. Robert Anderson, works out of Green Bay. When Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes needed surgery to repair a turf toe injury, he went to Anderson. When former Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman ruptured his Achilles tendon, it was Anderson who performed the surgery. Las Vegas Raiders wideout Davante Adams, the former Fresno State star, was treated by Anderson for a toe injury when in Green Bay.

“Every NFL guy goes to him for ankle injuries,” Ryan Haener said.

Maybe, Tedford thought, if he put one and one together it would add up to 1,578 passing yards with 13 touchdowns and five wins in five starts down the stretch of a season that at that point could go any which way.

“We had heard about him, so I called Aaron to see if we could get him on the phone and see if he would be willing to look at his MRI and his CT scan and things like that,” Tedford said.

Rodgers set up a call. Fresno State trainers sent the MRIs and CT scans to Anderson, and Haener returned home to the Bay Area. “I thought we’d be flying to Green Bay for surgery the next day,” Ryan Haener said.

But Anderson, after evaluating the exams, told Haener to sit tight. He said that he sees a lot of similar injuries in the NFL. He said that surgery would not be required. He said that it would be six to eight weeks, depending on how quickly the fracture healed.

“At that point, it was just about, OK, how long was it going to take to get to a point where he felt comfortable that it wouldn’t have a long-term effect on Jake,” Tedford said.

But there was a window, an opportunity. The fracture could heal quickly, or slowly, and as it turned out it was right on schedule. But there was a chance, and that was all Haener needed.

“Once he knew where the stake in the sand was, he just worked toward it,” Ryan Haener said.

HYPERBARIC CHAMBERS AND STEM CELLS

Haener spent time in a hyperbaric chamber, which increases the air pressure two to three times normal and the amount of oxygen the blood can carry. He received treatment on the ankle from a trainer, from a chiropractor. He also had a stem cell injection. “They jammed a needle all the way in my bone, just shoved it in there …” he said, in a way that will, or should, send a chill up the spine.

Haener did much of his rehab with safety Evan Williams, who had been injured in that loss at USC, suffering a medial collateral ligament tear in his left knee. They were on similar timetables, six to eight weeks.

The team captains pushed each other every day.

“As an athlete you just want something to chase after,” Williams said. “That six weeks, you’re trying to make it five and you’re trying to beat Jake. Just that competitiveness, that really helped in that whole process.”

“The treatment was over and over and over,” Tedford said. “He was really dedicated to that, almost to the point where you had to slow him down because he was feeling good ahead of time. He was like, ‘I feel like I can play.’ But then you’d look at certain things on the X-rays and stuff, it was, ‘No, you can’t play until this heals.’ But his dedication to rehab was second to none. He was just so committed to it.”

Haener had CT scans to check the progress, how the fracture was healing. One week, they were encouraged. Another week, not so much. And, the clock was ticking. There was a lot at stake, along with the Bulldogs’ season. Haener is a senior, with NFL aspirations and a resume to make them real.

“Obviously, I was worried about my future, as well,” Haener said. “But when you’re playing for something you want to get back as soon as possible and also the way we started the year, I started off pretty hot and was playing pretty well and people were paying attention to that.

“Then you get hurt all of a sudden and everyone forgets about you. You have to go put tape out there again and prove to people that you can still play and try to keep your stock continuing to rise. So, there was some of that, But I really just wanted to get back on the field.”

Six weeks out from the injury, the Bulldogs were scheduled to play San Diego State. That was the first real opportunity to get back on the field, six weeks out, and it became the target. Fresno State had a bye the week after playing at USC, then played at UConn, at Boise State, San Jose State and at New Mexico. They lost two, won two. The Aztecs were up next, a critical game every year in the Mountain West. In the first nine years the conference hosted a championship game, one of the two had represented the West Division seven times.

But, there was doubt. Haener put on a helmet and shoulder pads for the first time in weeks on the Thursday before the Bulldogs departed for the game at New Mexico. He did some light jogging that Saturday in Albuquerque, and an abbreviated workout on Sunday back in Fresno.

He was cleared to practice on Tuesday, and wearing a brace on the ankle split reps fairly evenly with Logan Fife, who had led the Bulldogs to wins over San Jose State and New Mexico, the start of a seven-game winning streak.

“I was super sore,” Haener said. “I didn’t think I was going to be able to play against San Diego State. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to help anyone. I wasn’t very confident in how I was feeling.”

That, of course, makes perfect sense: “I was still playing on a fractured ankle,” he said.

THE RETURN, AND TITLE SHOT

Haener threw for 394 yards. In that first game back, he hit 75.6% of his passes (34 of 45) with three touchdowns and the Bulldogs pulled off an implausible victory, scoring 15 points in just 13 seconds late in the fourth quarter.

Fresno State was down 28-17 when running back Jordan Mims scored on a 3-yard run with 1:09 remaining and Haener hit wideout Zane Pope with a 2-point conversion pass to get Fresno State within a field goal, and after the Bulldogs recovered an onside kick he hit Nikko Remigio with a 37-yard touchdown pass with 56 seconds to go.

Fresno State followed that up with victories over Hawaii, UNLV, Nevada and Wyoming and is averaging 39.0 points per game with Haener back at quarterback.

There was still a risk. That first month back, there was a chance the malleolus could fracture again. “I had to be careful and protect myself and if I got in comprising positions, when I was healthy I’d make people miss ... I just had to be smart,” he said. But Haener, sharper even than he was at the start of the season, has hit 74.7% of his passes while averaging 315.6 yards over the five games with 13 touchdowns and only two interceptions since his return.

“I was just like, ‘You know what, the team needs me and I’m going to give my best effort to go out there,’” he said. “I couldn’t really push off my back foot. I was throwing with all arm. But we found a way to get it done, somehow, and it’s constantly been getting better and better.

“Hawaii, they did another CT scan and it was about 85% healed. We haven’t done another CT scan since then, but I imagine it’s pretty much healed by now and at this point it’s just trying to get some strength back because I couldn’t squat or do anything for weeks. It’s been all about trying to maintain it and put the best product on the field, but it hasn’t been easy.”

Haener, standing outside the Duncan Building after the fourth of those five wins and with a division title and spot in the conference championship game clinched, shook his head, incredulous.

“I had a broken ankle,” he said. “I don’t know that people really know that and realize what I was dealing with. We kept it under wraps and said that it was a high ankle sprain, but they told me 12 weeks and I was done.

“No one really knew the severity of it. We kept it under wraps and said that it was a high ankle sprain.

“I was going to have surgery and I was going to go to Green Bay and get that done.“

On Saturday, Haener and the Bulldogs go to Boise, with a chance to win a Mountain West championship as was expected back in October, which would add to an already wild ride that includes some mementos picked up along the way.

Haener brings out the phone and there it is, the MRI and the fracture. He holds it up, points it out, even though that is not necessary. The fracture is as clear as that crisp fall day.

“Yeah, he said. “I’ll have that in my phone forever.”

THE GAME

FRESNO STATE at BOISE STATE

When: Saturday, 1 p.m.

Where: Albertsons Stadium

TV: FOX (Tim Brando, Spencer Tillman, Petros Papadakis)

• Find it fast: Channels 26 on AT&T Uverse, 6, 706, 1026 on Comcast, 26 on DirecTV, 5263 on Dish Network

Radio: Bulldog Sports Network (Paul Loeffler, Pat Hill, Cameron Worrell)

• Find it fast: 1400 AM in Visalia/Tulare; 1340 AM in Fresno; 1280 AM in Stockton; 970 AM in Bakersfield; 92.9 FM in Modesto; 96.7 FM in Fresno

The records: Bulldogs (8-4, 7-1 in the MW), Boise State (9-3, 8-0)

The series: Boise State leads 17-7

Last meeting: Boise State won 40-20 on Oct. 8.

The streak: Boise State has won 2 in a row and 4 of 5

The line: Boise State -3

This story was originally published December 1, 2022 at 1:12 PM.