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OCTOBER 2018 19 are especially well suited to talk to each other about something very few would truly understand. As the two oldest players on the team, they also have a different point of view on the game, on being a student-athlete and everything that comes with it. To Cook, leaving the university would've ultimately been bad for him in a number of ways, including not being around his team- mates any longer. "That whole process was dark," he ex- plained. "Trying to decide 'Okay, it's time to find a job.' My heart couldn't bring me to do it because my heart was here with football and because my heart wanted to be around the brotherhood and all the guys." Cook just couldn't get beyond the idea of losing the potential time with his friends and teammates. "They played a huge part," he said, "and Tim played an enormous part." "I think these injuries that we've had in the past and us overcoming it and coming together for a fifth year, then a sixth year, it really made us stronger," Harris noted. "We really got through a lot of hardship and adversity. "We're still going through a lot of stuff, but we're still getting stronger as the days go." Cook was able to pay some of that back recently when Dominic Shepherd, a third- year linebacker who had one of the best offseasons of anyone on the team, again tore his ACL in training camp and was lost for the year just a couple of weeks before the start of the season. "I'm just real passion- ate about Dom," Cook said. "I love Dom. I was in a predicament like that, in 2016, when you were so close to play- ing and then something happens. And so I was just telling him, the Lord probably has a different plan for him. "I told Dom it's not what you want to hear right now because I didn't want to hear that in 2016. But I told him, at this point in time, you can't go back on what happened. Now, you've just got to move forward and progress and get healthy and get better. "Your mindset is going to change. You go through certain phases, that phase when you feel like you might not want to play any more or if you do get healthy is this going to happen, you know that self-doubt in your- self. And I just told him, don't let anything create that self-doubt in your mind, try to keep a positive attitude." On the field, they've each dealt with changes too. Cook, who transitioned from safety to linebacker shortly after his arrival, has now moved from the outside to the in- side. It's a shift that has been aided by the fact that he knows it's best for his team and he's used to dealing with adjustments. "You train your mind to do certain things and then it's like you've got to switch them," Cook said. "… I was so used to being 10, 12 yards deep and then I was right there on the line. "And now I'm backed up five yards and I'm reading everything, like pullers and having to di- agnose certain other things. The mindset is the same, but everything is different." Harris, meanwhile, dealt with a slight back issue in training camp that opened the door for second-year Darrius Bratton to earn time this season at that cornerback spot. But his offseason work has helped Harris regain time in the lineup. "It's been great actually," he said. "I've been doing a lot of film study, just a lot of stuff to increase my game because there's still stuff I can work on. Just going to prac- tice and just not even thinking about inju- ries, I praise God for it." One thing so far that has helped Har- ris mentally is the fact that because of the freakish nature of his injuries, he's been able to move forward without worrying about getting hurt again. "I got time to grow through the spring, get comfortable with it through the spring and the summer, and by the time it's game time, I'm fine," he said. "It never messes with me. I just go out and play. "I just come out here every day like I haven't had any injuries, and it's been good for me." One can never know how the season will go, since it takes just one play for every- thing to change. No one knows that more than Cook and Harris. "It's just going out there and enjoying the last moments now," Cook said. "Taking in everything. … I think the whole set of line- backers is great, though, because everybody is challenging each other in certain ways." "I just feel like, since I was a first-year to me being a sixth-year, I've grown and overcome a lot of stuff and I know how to deal with life," Harris said. "I'll know how to deal with life after football, life after I leave here. "I'm glad I got to learn and have these experiences while I was here." "We're like brothers. We're unbreakable. We both understand the process and going through all our tri- als here … me and Tim have grown a lot from the first day we stepped on campus, since 2013." COOK Harris suffered season-ending injuries in 2016 and 2017, but has returned to log four tackles and one pass broken up through the first four games of 2018. PHOTO BY PETE EMERSON/COURTESY UVA