GREENVILLE, S.C. -- About a month ago, with some of Jamal Anderson's longtime friends visiting him in Atlanta, Anderson's wife, Anna, suggested the Atlanta Falcons' star tailback take the old gang out for some partying in the city's trendy Buckhead nightclub district.

When he balked, Anna all but ordered Atlanta's newest homebody out of the house, suggesting he was overdue for a night of mild carousing. But when Anderson arrived at some of the clubs he had frequented as one of the town's most eligible bachelors, he felt like an accidental tourist.

	Jamal Anderson ran for 1,024 yards and six touchdowns in 2000.

Here was a guy who in the past few years has grown comfortable attending his kids' gymnastics classes and now suddenly ill at ease in those glitz and glitter palaces made famous by gyrations of another ilk. And on Thursday afternoon, between training camp practices, there was Anderson, at one point not too long ago as omnipresent in Atlanta restaurants as chicken-fried steak, noshing on a giant salad and discoursing on the virtues of his newfound stay-at-home existence.

How incongruous was this whole scene, especially for a reporter who has known Anderson since he entered the NFL as a seventh-round choice in the 1994 draft?

OK, close your eyes and attempt to conjure up the image of Anderson, the human battering ram with thighs the size of sequoias, a tailback who reintroduced the stiff-arm to the league, trying to finesse his way past a quickly-closing strong safety. Yeah, we know, it just doesn't register, huh? It is, indeed, a synaptic misfire of epic proportions. But just as Anderson would never sidestep a chance for a train-wreck collision, he no longer has to tiptoe past snoozing relatives in the wee small hours and after a night of enjoying his celebrity.

For the Falcons star, the "good life" has been redefined.

"That night I went out with my friends," Anderson recalled, "people came up and talked with me and they were cool. But it wasn't like a few years ago. I wasn't the center of attention like I used to be. And you know what? That was fine with me. I don't have to be at all the big events all over town now. I'm finding out that, sometimes at least, it's not all that bad being missed."

Unless, of course, you are the Falcons franchise, which can't afford to be without the centerpiece of its offense for more than a few snaps at a time.

Since advancing to Super Bowl XXXIII in 1998, a title game appearance that might represent one of the greatest aberrations in NFL history, the Falcons have posted a 9-23 record. That is, by far, the worst two-year record ever fashioned by a team following a Super Bowl appearance. And the misery of the past two seasons can be traced in large part to a torn anterior cruciate ligament that Anderson suffered in his right knee in the second game of the '99 season.

It seemed that when Anderson's right knee popped, the Falcons' balloon burst. Two years later, however, the knee is sound again and there is a palpable sense in training camp that, while the Falcons probably won't return to the Super Bowl this year, they will be more competitive than in the past couple seasons.

That confidence has more to do with Anderson's right knee than, say, the presence of fledgling quarterback Michael Vick, the savior-in-waiting and a player who doesn't figure to be much more than an intriguing roleplayer in 2000.

"There's still no question about what we want to do on offense," said wide receiver Terance Mathis, for years the conscience and barometer for this team. "When we run well, it sets up all the other things for us. So Jamal is still the main man for us. You can see he's got his power back again. I think he's back to where he was (in 1998)."

The notion that it characteristically takes a running back two years to recover from major knee surgery is more truth than trite and Anderson is just the latest exhibit. Coach Dan Reeves spoke after Thursday morning's practice about how his surgically repaired left knee was never the same again following a 1968 operation. But the surgical procedures thirtysomething years ago were light-years behind what they are now.

A former running back himself, Reeves knew when he saw Anderson this spring, during some of the team's conditioning sessions, that he was finally all the way back from a devastating surgery that sent the Falcons into a tailspin.

Said Reeves: "He was definitely different from last year. Sometimes last season, even when he was playing well, you would notice a limp. I haven't seen that at all now."

For Anderson, the epiphany arrived sometime last December, when the Falcons were playing out the string in a dismal 4-12 campaign. On a routine off-tackle blast, he suddenly made a hard cut, blasted through an arm tackle and got up knowing all was well in his world again.

"I sort of thought to myself, 'Wow, it's back, man,' " Anderson said. "I mean, before that, it felt fine. I wasn't one of these guys who worried about re-injuring the knee. Not even subconsciously did I think about that. But I knew there were things I couldn't do yet that I had done so naturally in the past. Now I can do them all again."

	“	I don't have to be out on the town every night to define who I am or what I'm about. A night out for me now might be going to watch one of my friends' kids in a play or something. I really like this life. ”
		— Jamal Anderson, Falcons running back

That is hardly good news for the opposing safeties forced to play down "in the box" when teams stack the line of scrimmage against Anderson. There are few big backs with the combination of quick feet and pulverizing power that Anderson possesses, and he is a running back, people need to recall, just three years removed from one of the top 10 rushing seasons in league history. Not even the supremely confident Anderson will predict he's going to post 1,846 yards again ("Do you realize how hard it is to gain eighteen-hundred yards!" he shrieked), but 1,200 to 1,400 yards is a given, he surmises.

Certainly, the Atlanta offense is designed with Anderson as its fulcrum. He became a national persona in '98 because of the Cinderella season the Falcons enjoyed and his starring role in one of the truly amazing franchise performances of the past 25 years. That season thrust him into a spotlight that, even in the past two years, has dimmed only a little. There is the promise of doing network analysis when he retires, and Anderson still has the Hollywood itch, a yen to at least try a career in acting.

But at age 28, at a time when most big backs are beginning to erode, he still likely has some good seasons remaining in the league. In 2000, he quietly willed himself to 1,024 yards, running behind one of the worst offensive lines in football. The blocking unit remains unsettled at this juncture of the preseason, but Anderson is dead set on restoring his status if not necessarily his stardom.

His third child was born last week and, while he cautiously avoids mentioning the names of his children, there is no denying the metamorphosis the kids and Anna have promulgated. Three or four years ago, at a similar luncheon interview, Anderson arrived with a bodacious, diamond and gold "Jam" bauble dangling around his neck. The only adornment on Thursday was an I.D. card issued by Furman University, attached to a lanyard, a nondescript reminder of who he is.

"I am more low-key now," Anderson suggested and, then noticing a reporter's reaction, "OK, well, not that low-key. But I'm more Jamal now than I am 'Jam,' you know? I don't have to be out on the town every night to define who I am or what I'm about. A night out for me now might be going to watch one of my friends' kids in a play or something. I really like this life."

The cynic might rightly protest that Anderson is one of the professional athletes scheduled to testify at the Gold Club trial in Atlanta, where players are said to have received sexual favors for free in an effort to hype the club's local profile. Unlike some of the players, none of whom are charged with any criminal activity, Anderson has not dodged questions about the situation. But he does add quickly that he didn't frequent the Gold Club and that the incidents alleged to have occurred were three or four years ago.

He probably will testify sometime in the next month, and his presence in the courtroom will make for a circus atmosphere in Atlanta, he acknowledged. But then it will be over, the distraction to the team and to his family being short-lived, and he will return to an existence that, when compared to his more rollicking days, must seem mundane.

Funny, though, how Anderson doesn't consider his new life so ordinary. He has found a way to better balance his priorities, to merge his public and private worlds with an equilibrium forged through a lot of new realities. The player who once spent his offseason sprinting up the rugged trail outside the back door of his home in Salt Lake City to stay in shape hasn't quite reached the mountain top again, but he's making progress.

Asked if he was still the central figure of the offense, Anderson finally smiled, the old twinkle back in his eye.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Michael Vick isn't the starter here yet, you know."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.