12:25 PM
12/03/24
12/03/24
August 09, 2010
ACL Tear a Career Ender for Many NFL Players: Less than two-thirds of National Football League players are able to return to play after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears even after surgery, according to new research. Out of 49 players who had the surgery, 31 returned to play. The ones who didn't were often draft picks in rounds five or higher. "They may rather 'cut their losses' for late draft picks," said study author Dr. Vishal Michael Shah.
That's pretty sad. They could probably come back, but they aren't worth the trouble to the teams.
posted by bperk at 04:01 PM on August 09, 2010
The article said that NFL contracts are not guaranteed but more and more players are signing deals with some percentage of guaranteed money.
There are already insurance coverage packages for individual players and now I'm assuming they are covering guaranteed contracts as well.
The word on ACL rehab that I had always heard was that the athlete who rehabbed successfully would come back with a knee that was stronger that before the injury.
So I had thought that perhaps teams would start training preemptively to strengthen joints and lower the chances of ACL tears.
This is being done with elite female soccer players, who tend to have near epidemic rates of ACL tears for numerous physiological reasons.
But evidently it is not effective with the NFL players, according to the article.
I have also heard that diligence is extremely important with rehabbing an ACL injury. Maybe not every player is as dedicated as guys like Carson Palmer or Tom Brady - and may not have all the rehab support services that they did.
I'd like to see them talk about body size and weight with this issue. The successful rehab and return rate for a 6' 5", 320 pound player may be lower than for a guy like Brady, with all the added stress being placed on the injured joint in the case of the larger man.