Unbreakable

Highly touted but beset by multiple injuries, BC linebacker Brian Toal is finally healthy and ready to carry the Eagles in his senior season

Myriad injuries may have prevented Eagles linebacker Brian Toal from fulfilling his early promise - he was the Big East Rookie of the Year in 2004 - but the senior is climbing his way back. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)

This was before the freshman year at Boston College that would make him a player to be watched, even well before the blaze of high school glory beneath the dim Friday night lights, a string of honors from USA Today and Parade, and the weekly visits from college recruiters. "It was," said Mike Toal, "just an eighth grade football game." But to Brian Toal, the youngest of three brothers, it was life as he had always known it - at full speed and fanatic fury, and no matter that it was a mundane kickoff. He was off like it would be his last chance at the game and as he made his way downfield, his family members took note. "We're watching him run as fast as he can and then he drills this kid making the return. I mean, he hits him like you've rarely seen an eighth-grader get hit," said Mike. "I remember seeing the play and we all kind of looked at each other, like 'What was that?' I turned to my father and said, 'Man, Brian's pretty good.'" Mike Toal can't remember if there was a smile on his father's face that day, but chances are there was a pride within Greg Toal's heart. His world revolves around family and football - in that order, usually.

"Brian just loves to play the game," said Greg Toal. "Football is exciting to him. It's one of the things that always separated him from the others."

Untimely setback
There's a chance the name jogs the memory banks. Brian Toal? Jersey kid. Tough, fast, relentless. Whatever happened to him anyway? If that's the way it is, he doesn't take it personally. Matter of fact, that is what feeds the motivation for BC's fifth-year linebacker.

"When I came in [in the fall of 2004], supposedly the big recruit or whatever, I felt I had a lot to prove - and then I proved myself. But, obviously . . . "

Life got in the way. Football life, that is. Which means injuries, his neck during the sophomore campaign of 2005, then that simple tackle against Clemson in Week 2 of the 2006 season that left him with a sharp sting in his right shoulder. In both cases, he played through the pain, but Toal will join in harmony with those who say he wasn't at his best.

"Naturally, people forget about you and don't remember the things that you could do," he said. "That's fine. I don't mind it. I see it as a challenge. I'm just excited to go out there and make a name for myself again. I feel I have the ability to do it."

When he takes the field Saturday in Cleveland against Kent State, it will have been some 20 months since the kid from Wyckoff, N.J., last donned his No. 16 jersey. It is the Meineke Car Care Bowl win over Navy to close out the 2006 season that serves as his most recent connection to game duty, but so much of that season is a blur, because of that tackle against Clemson.

"The day after that Clemson game, I couldn't tie my shoe," said Toal, a 6-foot, 238-pound linebacker.

Yet he played the next week against Brigham Young and for parts of eight of the following nine games, simply because what makes him go is what his father saw in him as far back as grade school. "Brian just loves to play the game."

But in 2007, Brian Toal couldn't play. The shoulder pain that limited his productivity needed to be addressed and it took a mother's love and intuition to play a key role. Doctors had told Toal that the shoulder was bruised and that it would heal, and while that was good enough for the men in the family, Susan Toal thought differently.

"You know your own children," she said. "I decided to take it further."

The news, delivered in the first days of 2007, was jolting. Brian Toal had played for weeks with a torn labrum in his right shoulder and doctors recommended immediate surgery. He came to grips with that diagnosis, but Toal also saw the glass as half-full. "There was never a doubt in my mind that I wasn't going to play [in 2007]. I was going to do everything in my power to be out there at the start of the season," he said.

Good plan, but he didn't factor in the skin rash that delayed the first scheduled operation. Nor did he consider the possibility that a second scheduled operation would be pushed back because of an appendectomy. A surgery he figured would be performed in January wasn't done until March, and when Brian Toal listened to the doctors tell him what the rehabilitation period would be like, he knew he would soon face his first season without football since the third grade.

This strong-hearted woman from St. Anthony's High School in Jersey City ("I was a basketball woman, but now I'm a football person," she said) saw things differently for her son.

"It was," she said, "a good year to take care of the rest of his business."

Playing for a legend
They were what she called "lunch dates," because Susan Toal spent so much time with her youngest son, given that Brian was 6 and 5 years younger than Mike and Greg. So while the older boys were out playing their sports with their father, Susan and Brian went on their merry way.

Eventually, though, they'd wind up at wherever it was that Mike and Greg were and that's when Susan would take note of Brian. "He was always watching his brothers, he wasn't playing in the dirt," said Susan Toal. "He wanted to follow."

Greg Toal noticed that about his youngest son, too, and when that copy-cat mentality included football, well, it pleased him greatly. It meant all three of his boys had embraced the sport that has more than shaped his life - it is a legacy of sorts. Greg Toal is a one-man dynasty in New Jersey high school football circles. He won two state titles as head coach at River Dell and five more at Hackensack (when son Mike was on the team), then at Ramapo he was an assistant coach on teams that won state titles (with son Greg aboard).

Then came the call.

"We had been out and when we got home, Mike said Dad had called," said Susan. "He was going to be the head coach at Don Bosco [in Ramsey, N.J.]. Brian right away said, 'I'm not going to Bosco.' "

Years later, there is a soft smile, but Brian confirms the story. His brothers had gone to public schools and won championships and he wanted to do the same. "I was kind of raised not polite to Catholic schools," he said, a reference to the dominating record public schools had in the rivalries. "I wasn't totally thrilled [about Don Bosco]."

His brothers understood, but so, too, did they see a clearer picture. That is, the chance to play for a legend, even if it happened to be their father. "There's no coach like my dad," said Mike, who went on to play for William & Mary. "He inspired us and Brian was born into the same thing."

Ryan Grant, who now plays for the Green Bay Packers, went to Don Bosco and so did current Rutgers quarterback Mike Teel. Brian Toal, a hard-hitting linebacker who also bowled you over as a fullback, saw the caliber of player his father was choosing to turn Don Bosco from a doormat into a contender and agreed it was where he wanted to be. The championships also came Brian's way and they've continued, too. Told that his father's total at Don Bosco was four, giving him 11 overall as head coach, the BC linebacker laughed. "I didn't know that. I had lost count."

They were great times, those Don Bosco years, and when it came time to choose a college, the calls came from Miami, Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska, Tennessee, Oregon, and even from his father's alma mater, Virginia Tech. But so far as Susan was concerned, "in the end there weren't a lot of choices, really." That's because middle son Greg had treasured his years at Boston College and Brian pictured himself doing similarly.

"Ultimately, it was his choice," said the father. "But I always liked BC. Heck, it's the 10th year we've had a son playing football there [Greg redshirted as a freshman], so obviously we've liked it a lot."

No one disputes that Brian Toal's freshman year was highlight-reel stuff - five games he had at least seven tackles and as a goal-line fullback he scored a half-dozen touchdowns - and he was duly cited as Big East Rookie of the Year. But those who know him best - his father, his brothers, his coaches - are confident that even better stuff can follow, now that he's healthy.

"He got a bad break getting injured and he was hurt a lot worse than he thought," said BC's defensive coordinator, Frank Spaziani. "The injury was sobering to him, but comforting in another way. He knows now that this is what he wants to do."

Susan Toal was most proud that Brian, 23, stuck to his studies and graduated, and his brothers and father say the year away from the game had a profound effect on the youngest member of the family.

"He's definitely on a mission," said Greg, who is settled in New Jersey, living not far from brother Mike and his parents. "He's bigger, faster, and stronger than ever and he's as serious as anyone can be. He's never been a bad kid, but he's more focused than ever. In a way, he feels like it's his last shot."

What it is, said Brian Toal, is a reminder of what his dad so often would tell him.

"[Football] is a lot like life. That's what my dad always compared it to. There are always going to be tough times, but you have to overcome them. You've got to battle through the little things to get it done for your team."

Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com.