In Room 330 of the Marriott Hotel in Providence, R.I., Takeo Spikes tries to sleep. In the morning, he will play in a regular-season game for the first time since Sept. 25 of last year, when he tore his Achilles’ tendon.

Through the night, the Bills’ linebacker wakes every couple of hours. He dozes off at 3 a.m. And he dreams. He sees himself making a sack. And forcing a fumble.

It’s morning now, and he boards the hotel elevator to catch the team bus to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. When the elevator bell rings, signaling its arrival at the lobby, he feels tingly, a rush of excitement. Spikes asks himself this question as the elevator doors open: “Looking back from the day of my injury, did I do everything I could have done?”

It’s 80 minutes before kickoff, and he’s walking on the field. He has a slight limp in his gait. The right leg, between the knee and the heel, is smaller than the left. Beneath his white stocking is a seven-inch scar.

He says hello to a friend, then crosses the goal line in the south end zone. He has a vision. “I don’t know if it’s a fumble or an interception, but I feel a touchdown in this end zone,” he says as he walks back to the locker room.

Blitz gone bad

Fifty weeks ago, when Spikes was lying on the field at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo, such visions and dreams were beyond the imagination.

It seems like yesterday. Spikes comes around the corner on a blitz. As he tries to free himself from Falcons tight end Alge Crumpler, his right leg gives way, and he goes down. He feels no pain. He hears nothing. Silence in a room with 73,000 people. He can’t move his foot. He can’t stand. He doesn’t know it yet, but his Achilles’ tendon looks like it went through a paper shredder.

Buffalo linebacker Takeo Spikes, right, forces a fumble from New England's Tom Brady on the first play of Sunday's game. The Bills' London Fletcher picked up the ball and scored a touchdown on Spikes' first play from scrimmage since injuring his Achilles' tendon Sept. 25, 2005.

The injury is not a surprise. Spikes had experienced pain in his lower right leg for a year. The Thursday before the game, he had felt something give when he took a step. He went in for an MRI, which showed small tears in his Achilles’ tendon. He could have shut it down, but the linebacker whose first name means “great warrior” in Japanese is not that kind of player.

He is carted off to the locker room, where his mother, Lillie, tells him, “You’ll be all right.”

Spikes, who had been playing football for 22 years and never suffered a serious injury in a game, does not want to hear it.

“I’m not going to be all right!” he yells. “I’m out for the whole year!” Tears are running down his cheeks.

In the days that follow surgery to repair the tendon, Spikes is miserable. He gets upset with his mother, who stays with him in his Atlanta home, because she feels sorry for him. And because she doesn’t feel sorry for him. She tells him he is moodier than a pregnant woman in her third trimester.

‘The Comeback’ begins

One week after the game, Spikes is lying in his bed, unable to get a drink of water without ringing a bell for his mother’s assistance. The Bills are playing the Saints on TV. He listens to the national anthem, which always touches his heart. He sees his teammates lined up. He weeps.

For weeks, he can’t bring himself to watch game tape. Even in February, he turns off the Pro Bowl, sickened by hearing broadcasters talk about the linebackers who were given one of the berths that could have – should have – been his.

Teammates, such as linebacker Mario Haggan, phone Spikes to try to lift his spirits. The conversations dance around Spikes’ injury and his feelings of detachment. “What’s up with the guys? … How’s your baby girl?” Anything to avoid the 1,000-pound ball and chain on Spikes’ leg.

Two weeks after the injury, Spikes has had enough moping around. He and his agent, Todd France, design a T-shirt that predicts “I’ll be back: Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Better” and begin selling them on takeospikes51.com.

Though he will be in a walking boot for 10 more grueling weeks, The Comeback, as it is officially proclaimed, is on and in a very public way.

Road to recovery

The long rehabilitation road begins at the Sports Rehab Center in Atlanta with 20 marbles on the floor in front of Spikes. Brian Tovin, who will oversee every step of Spikes’ rehab, tells him to pick each one up with his toes and deposit it in a jar. It is three weeks before Spikes can do it consistently.

During the heavy rehabilitation periods, he is spending up to 10 hours a day, five days a week on his Achilles’ tendon. This includes spending two hours a day in a hyperbaric chamber, walking and running on an underwater treadmill and active release therapy, a soft-tissue massage technique.

Helping Spikes through this arduous period is his childhood friend, Robert Edwards. Once a first-round pick of the Patriots, Edwards now is a running back for Montreal in the Canadian Football League. Edwards, who had his knee scoped, goes through many of the rehab exercises with Spikes. And he continues to stay by his side long after his personal rehab is complete. For three months, they are together daily, turning rehab into games, competing and getting stronger.

Edwards and Spikes are together the first time Spikes runs outside in March. Spikes’ steps are awkward and flat-footed. But it doesn’t matter. They are joyous steps.

Through the spring and summer, Spikes continues to work with more focus and intensity than ever, intent on getting further past this injury than players such as Dan Marino and Sam Cowart could. He works his leg so hard that at one point he develops tendinitis in his knee and has to back off.

Summer dreams

Training camp is here, and Spikes has a gift for each of his teammates. It’s the book Mind Gym, which inspired Spikes in the off-season. He had taken notes when he read it, and he refers to them still. What he took from the book was this advice: Look at your setbacks as opportunities for comebacks. The book suggests envisioning success before it happens.

One night, in another dream, Spikes is walking upstairs to a stage. In front of him is a skinny microphone on top of a glass podium. He is handed a trophy with a thick glass base and a globe on top. On the orb are the letters “ESPY.” Spikes is the 2006 comeback player of the year.

When he wakes, though, he is just a former Pro Bowl player who can’t even push himself up on the ball of his foot. Initially in camp, caution rules him. Defensive coordinator Perry Fewell has him practicing only once a day, first with six reps per practice, then nine, then 15.

About two weeks into camp, the offense runs a reverse. Spikes recognizes it, plants on his right leg and drives off it -hard. He and Fewell glance at one another and smile. This is a moment.

A week later, Fewell and Spikes agree he is ready for contact. The offense runs right at Spikes. He takes on a block violently – bam! – and gets off it. Spikes looks around. Another milestone.

The next hurdle is playing in an exhibition game, when he’ll be standing around piles and have players around his legs, and everything that happens will be less predictable. On his first play, Spikes brings down Browns running back Reuben Droughns after a two-yard gain. Twelve plays later, he is ready for the next step.

It’s real now, opening day. Beneath a glorious New England sky, the Patriots run the first play of the game from their 21. The call is for Spikes to blitz. He shoots the “B” gap between left guard Logan Mankins and tackle Matt Light like a blur, and no one picks him up. He knocks Tom Brady in the back of his head as Brady cocks his arm and dislodges the ball. Middle linebacker London Fletcher picks up the ball and runs 5 yards for a touchdown in the south end zone at Gillette Stadium.

Spikes feels wired, in sync. He is certain he has two or three more big plays in him.

But when he accelerates while trying to undercut tight end Ben Watson on an out route on the Patriots’ next possession, he feels a pull. It’s his right hamstring.

For today, The Comeback is over. But in many ways, it is just beginning.