Dropped my lens - can anyone help figure out the problem?

[kevin99989]

I've been posting here regularly, and this is a bit off topic, but i'm wondering if you could me with this.

I dropped my lens off a cliff while climbing a waterfall last week (55-200mm Nikon 3.5-5.6). If found it at the very bottom of the trail. The autofocus still works, but the zoom ring is very tight to turn (but it still works). The lens does not have visible scratches on it, and I have tried to take shots with the autofocus on and off (manual focus), and with VR turned on and off.

This is my best result (attached) at 200mm; f 7.1 1/400; ISO 200; Photo was cropped to 1/5 size in the horizontal direction.

The focus is not sharp, but seems to some dreamy softness to it. Anyone seen this before??