For the first four seasons of his NFL career, wide receiver Jerome Pathon dreamed of earning a Pro Bowl spot while playing for the Indianapolis Colts.

	“	It's just how things go sometimes anymore. You limp off the field holding one team's helmet in your hand. The next time you run back out onto the field, you're wearing some other team's (helmet). ”
		— Tony Boselli, Texans OT

In his fifth season, Pathon can still conjure up visions of winning an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii, but the NFL-subsidized vacation would come with a fleur-de-lie instead of a horseshoe on the side of his helmet.

While recovering this offseason from foot surgery that limited him to only four games in 2001, Pathon signed a four-year contract with the New Orleans Saints as an unrestricted free agent. He is one of several prominent veterans who will return in 2002 from injuries suffered a year ago, but whose comeback will be with a team different from the one that paid for much of his rehabilitation.

"It's a little bit of a weird feeling," said Pathon, expected to start opposite Joe Horn in the revamped Saints lineup. "You get hurt for one team and you come back with another. It's certainly not the textbook case."

Perhaps not, but situations like that of Pathon are seemingly more prevalent this spring than in years past, and make for intriguing training camp subplots. There are a number of compelling cases in which a rehabilitating player figures to boost the fortunes of a club willing to gamble that he would rebound from a 2001 injury.

The New York Jets, for instance, are rolling the dice that former Buffalo Bills standout linebacker Sam Cowart will be fully recovered from the Achilles injury that sidelined him for all but one game of the '01 season. They negotiated a contract that clearly addresses the injury and provides the team some protections if Cowart isn't 100 percent again.

Dallas is counting on former Jacksonville linebacker Kevin Hardy, who missed half the 2001 season with a knee injury, to add outside speed to its pass rush. San Diego feels that former Washington starter Stephen Alexander, sidelined by a broken leg, can become its answer at tight end. Philadelphia lost starting weakside linebacker Mike Caldwell in free agency and his projected replacement is former Redskins starter Shawn Barber, who sat out the final 13 games of 2001 after knee surgery. New Orleans is handing the job at right tackle to former Kansas City stalwart Victor Riley, rehabbing from a broken leg.

In perhaps the highest-profile move the expansion team has made in the offseason, the Houston Texans are banking on perennial Pro Bowl offensive tackle Tony Boselli to recover from three shoulder surgeries in the past seven months.

"It's just how things go sometimes anymore," acknowledged Boselli. "You limp off the field holding one team's helmet in your hand. The next time you run back out onto the field, you're wearing some other team's (helmet)."

By unofficial count, there are 16 players who missed eight games or more in 2001 and who have signed with new teams for the 2002 season. The number is apt to rise in the next few weeks. Atlanta tailback Jamal Anderson, for instance, is coming off a second knee surgery in three years and will be released as a post-June 1 cap casualty next week.

If the surgeons have indeed have cobbled Humpty Dumpty back together again, the Falcons won't be the team that benefits from their expertise.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.