Joe Howell

Tennessee tight end Brad Cottam, left, is congratulated by Josh McNeil after Cottam's 31-yard touchdown reception in the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla.

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Brad Cottam perfectly understands the NFL draft day phrase "on the clock."

The University of Tennessee tight end has been on the clock the last three months, trying to impress NFL scouts after missing the first nine games of his senior season with a broken wrist.

Cottam apparently has delivered under pressure.

In the three venues where he's had the most exposure to pro scouts - the Senior Bowl, the NFL combine and Tennessee's pro day - his draft stock has increased each time.

With this year's NFL draft set to start Saturday, Cottam figures to be a first-day selection, probably taken in the third round. That's a heck of a comeback for the Evangelical Christian School graduate, whose saw his early round draft chances take a serious dent when his wrist snapped in a preseason scrimmage last August.

"There was never a time after I got hurt that I thought I wouldn't play in the NFL," Cottam said, "yet I was worried how much the injury would cost me when it came time to getting drafted.

"The Senior Bowl, the (NFL) combine and (Tennessee) pro day didn't completely make up for me missing most of my senior year, but everyone now knows I'm healthy."

A bad break

Less than two weeks before last season's opener at California, Tennessee held its last preseason scrimmage.

UT coach Phillip Fulmer was feeling good about his offense. Though he had lost his three best receivers to the NFL (draft and free agency), he was confident in his offense for three reasons.

The first was senior quarterback Erik Ainge's being able to handle offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe's new no-huddle schemes. Also, the Vols had a veteran running game, led by Arian Foster.

Finally, there was Cottam, one of the most physically blessed tight ends in Tennessee history. He was so strong and fast and had such a good spring that Cutcliffe planned to showcase him.

"We spent a large part of the spring and part of two-a-days in the preseason building a lot of our offense around his abilities," Fulmer said. "Then the last scrimmage before our first game ..."

Cottam jumped to catch a long throw to the end zone. The ball was underthrown, and Cottam made the catch. But he landed awkwardly and stuck out his left hand to break his fall.

He didn't suspect anything serious. He played one more play after falling on the wrist, then came to the sideline, where he found his longtime friend, condo mate and former ECS basketball star Clint Dowdle, a Vols football graduate assistant.

"He told me, 'I think I hurt my wrist,'" Dowdle said. "But he didn't think it was any big deal. He has a high pain tolerance. Brad is as tough as they come."

Even after trainers began icing the wrist before taking him to the hospital, Cottam didn't think it was serious.

"I looked at the X-ray and said, 'There doesn't look like there's anything wrong,'" Cottam said. "I was excited. Then, the doctors told me the bad news. I lost it."

Understandably so. Cottam had spent his entire college career fighting through injury after injury, including two right-shoulder surgeries, a thumb problem and a sports hernia.

A funny thing is that Cottam wasn't injury-prone as a kid. He and brother Jeff played just about every sport, from street hockey in the cove near their house to basketball, football and even soccer.

"Brad didn't play football until the eighth grade," said Charlie Cottam, Brad's father. "Davis Griffin, one of Brad's friends, played football in the seventh grade for the Germantown Little Red Devils and came to school wearing a letter jacket. Brad was impressed with the letter jacket and wanted to know where he could get one. So Brad started playing football.

"Then after his senior season in basketball, the coaches asked him to come play soccer. To see a 6-8 guy running downfield and kicking a soccer ball was quite a sight."

But Cottam was a good-enough athlete to pull it off.

"Brad does things that are amazing for somebody his size," Dowdle said. "Somebody that big, you don't expect him to run (4.63 seconds in the 40) or jump (36 inches vertical) like he does."

Dowdle and Cottam first became friends at ECS when Dowdle was a junior and Cottam a freshman. They played on the basketball team together before coaches persuaded Cottam to play football.

"When I was a senior in football, Brad and me were on the scout team together," said Dowdle, who played basketball and graduated from Christian Brothers University. "I was the quarterback, and he was a tight end who helped my completion percentage. My goal was to throw it as high as I could, even if he was covered, so Brad could come down with it. My dad was the receivers coach, and he called Brad 'Hoover' because he just was a vacuum, catching anything thrown near him."

Cottam's strong resolve, as well as the support of his condo-mates - Dowdle, wide receiver Casey Woods and Cottam's brother Jeff (who took his place in the starting lineup) - somehow got Cottam through football season until he was cleared to play the week of the Arkansas game.

For almost two months, he rehabbed the injury and kept the rest of his body in game shape. He still went to practice and watched from the sidelines. He continued to attend meetings.

But on those game days ...

"The first few times I went to a stadium, it was awful sitting on the sidelines and watching," Cottam said. "The worst might have been sitting there watching us lose to Alabama, because I felt I could be out there helping."

The NCAA could have given Cottam, an honor student who graduated in December 2006, a break by granting him a sixth year of eligibility. He redshirted as a freshman in 2003 and was in on just 23 offensive plays in 2005 before getting hurt.

When the NCAA didn't throw Cottam that bone, he was just as happy to return to the Vols' lineup. In the final five games of the season, he caught five passes for 125 yards as Tennessee won the SEC Eastern Division title and beat Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl, a game in which Cottam caught the first touchdown pass of his college career.

"You'll never know how much we missed Brad," Fulmer said.

Casting calls

Cottam's only catch of the Senior Bowl in January was a 6-yard touchdown, and it climaxed a week of practice that showed he had little rust from missing the bulk of his senior season.

At the NFL combine, he was prodded, pulled and poked by doctors who came away convinced he's fully healed.

Then at Tennessee's pro day, he blew away scouts with that three-foot vertical jump. Since then, he worked out for several more NFL teams and impressed them with his ability to quickly learn plays and decipher defensive coverages.

Bit by bit, his broken wrist and lost senior season have faded away.

"When I say I've had bad luck with injuries, some people think I'm crazy for saying that," Cottam said. "If I didn't play my senior year, you wouldn't have heard anything about the other injuries. If I hadn't had that one right before my senior year, it wouldn't have been an issue at all.

"I'm just anxious right now. I'm in between teams, and I'm ready to know where I'm going."

Spoken like a man on the clock.