Gucci Mane

August 7th, 2016 at 5:43 PM ^

It is rarely reported just exactly how severe an ACL tear is. I bet some of these guys that come back very fast from this injury only had a partial tear, a full blown rupture is pretty awful.

Hail Harbo

August 7th, 2016 at 6:35 PM ^

I can't speak for Jake Ryan and Jake Butt, but Drake Johnson spoke of having a cadaver ligament to replace his ACL for one of his injuries and an autograft for the other.  I don't recall which was which, but the point is that he had full blown ACL replacement twice and both times he was able to return to form in less than a year.

egrgoblue

August 7th, 2016 at 7:42 PM ^

Isolated PCL tears (partial or complete) are typically treated with bracing and rehab and generally speaking are not career ending. The much more serious injury would be a PCL injury in association with ACL and/or collateral ligament injury. Think McGahee or Napolean Kauffman.

DairyQueen

August 7th, 2016 at 1:59 PM ^

if you were running and had your front-leg firmly planted (knee bent or straight, doesn't matter--but bent at 45-90 degrees or more is more common), and you got hit directly on your shin, with the force pushing directly backwards, that's essentially the textbook case in PCL tears in football.

It's a more rare injury because normally if you get hit on a firmly-planted leg, the grass, or turf (which sadly didn't used to in it's first few iterations) would tear or give out (you also instinctively retract your leg), relieving the force on your leg, 99% of the time.

Or, if it wasn't open-field, it may have happened in scrum while being tackled. But the forces would be the same, only instead the events leading up to it would be tragically freak-accident perfect. But it does happen, if you play enough snaps.

Also, it's absolutely possible the initial sprain could have happened in a previous game. A medical diagnosis of a "partial tear", is a general, inspecific meedical term. It doesn't necessarily mean anything is torn in the way we colloquially use the term "torn" at all, just a severe sprain (microtears--like overstretching an elastic band) that would show under MRI as tissue damage/fluid, and/or Mobility/Pain Tests which can be surprisingly accurate indicators. So, hee may have even have been playing on this injury for a bit.

Also, they have crazy access to medicine, there's even like modulated wave-length therapy, where they can get the ligament to vibrate at a certain frequency and heal it faster, and even apparently "make the ligament tighter" as in shrink the over-stretched ligament so it's back to being tight again.

Wizardry.

But I'm glad to see he's back and is "full go", he was a such a clutch player for us last year.

 

 

VauntedD

August 7th, 2016 at 1:29 PM ^

Having him back healthy is huge for the year.  He really caught on tracking the deep ball as the season progressed. l  hope the quarterback battle sorts itself out quickly and Jehu and Darboh can show the young guys how it is done.  Go Blue.

Avon Barksdale

August 7th, 2016 at 1:49 PM ^

Doesn't look like he lost weight while injured. That is good news. Probably did a great deal of upper body work to become stronger. Let's hope he can stay healthy and torch future top ten picks all season again.

Yooper

August 7th, 2016 at 3:35 PM ^

I am very familiar with ACL and MCL injuries, recovery time, etc.  Not so much PCL injuries. Can someone in the know describe PCL injury and comment on severity, limitations, recovery etc.

Thanks.