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Provo

Still in his jersey and pads, with globs of sweat puddling up in the creases of his face and then flooding down his nose and cheeks, from a furnace-hot Saturday scrimmage, Fred Warner's work was done for one more day. He led the defense in tackles. And that was enough, the linebacker happy, appreciative and grateful even, to be doing his work again, to be playing his game, to be slamming his body around, crashing into ball carriers.

"I'm just blessed to be out here," he said.

That's what a broken wrist and a broken back in a single freshman season will teach a kid — to abide having surgery and wearing a cast on his arm for three months and a brace on his back for six, left to wonder in the wearing whether he'd ever be the same again, if he could ever do the same things he'd done before and do them better.

In the corners of his mind, Warner still wonders.

"It's all behind me now," he said. "I'm feeling pretty great."

But he double-clutched at the qualifier there, the "pretty" part. And then he came clean.

"A back injury is hard to come back from, fully," he said, "There will be days when it feels good and days when my back is tight and it's harder to run. … We'll see as time goes on. I'm optimistic. It's just always there."

So it is that Warner, the linebacker from San Marcos, Calif., that everybody wanted, including schools like USC and Arizona State and Washington, is back on the field for BYU, looking to forget about last season and forge ahead to big performances this year. He's hoping to get on track for what he's planned on doing since his emergence as a defensive star at Mission Hills High School near San Diego: play quality college ball before heading off to the NFL.

He confessed, again, that when he was stuck wearing that brace, after the UNLV game last season, all of that good stuff seemed far away. As though the immortal young athlete with the limitless promise, never before compromised, suddenly faced his own vulnerability, his own humanness.

He's still facing it, trying to trust his 6-foot-3, 230-pound frame again.

"I just need to be more relentless to the football," he said. "That will come as the games keep coming. … I want to be the biggest playmaker on the field, for sure."

BYU linebackers coach Kelly Poppinga said Warner's abilities, mental and physical, are premium grade: "He's cerebral. He understands the defense super well. He loves to play the game, very energetic, he likes to talk, he makes plays and he has great speed. He can pass-rush and cover, play out in space."

Another double-clutch.

"He just needs to get back in, feel comfortable, be confident that he's not going to break his back again or hurt his wrist. He's been a little bit tentative, especially early in camp. But now he's seeing that he can hit someone really hard and nothing bad happens. He's getting back to being himself, being the playmaker he was."

Toughness isn't an issue.

"He went ahead and played with that broken wrist last year," Poppinga said, "and it was a serious break."

A serious break the player never mentioned to coaches until after the back fracture.

Prior to those injuries, Warner had played football pretty much unencumbered. It's not that everything had always come easy for him. He was the product of a subsequently broken marriage, with him from an early age playing the role of father for his younger brother and sister. If his mom, Laura, a terrific woman who kept her household afloat, was the engine in the family, Fred was the example for his siblings.

He wasn't a football star from jump, failing to dominate at Mission Hills until his senior season, but his talents were eventually seen and noted. "I was a late bloomer," Warner said. "I don't even think I started a lot of games my junior year, but I made enough plays to [compile] a highlight film and coaches noticed it from there."

Any Southern California kid, among all the great talent there, recruited and wooed by USC has already accomplished something to be envied. He decided against the Trojans, though, and for the Cougars either because he didn't want to fight with so many great athletes tussling for starter's minutes at University Park or because his mom and he, who are LDS, really loved BYU.

Warner said it was the latter.

"And," he added, "I can get to the NFL from here."

He can also get a valuable degree in business.

The teenager who came to BYU with a name and a rep — four stars attached and status as the No. 15-rated outside linebacker in the country — and who had moments of brilliance in his freshman season before the injuries swamped him, looks ahead to whatever comes next, thankful for the chance to run toward it.

He's dialing in on a breakout year where all that promise gets made real. Not a year where the breaks make it real hard on him. "I feel good," he said. "We'll see as time goes on. … A full recovery, I think, is coming up pretty soon."

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.