Quote:
Originally Posted by BossChief
Do you realize how unreasonable that expectation is, though?
The average NFL career is 3 years. With or without injury.
Rick has dealt with this injury both successfully and unsuccessfully and gave about the best feedback anyone could ever hope for.
We don’t even fully know if this was a full or partial tear.
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I certainly thought it was partial until they started talking about the double graft and looked it up.
A) I can't see anything anywhere to suggest they'd do it in the case of a partial tear. If it was what the reporting suggest it was, what they do is double the replacement over to strengthen it and then put in extra 'tacks' to deal with the fact that it's now doubled over. That's a rebuild either way.
B) I don't think it matters if you're actually rebuilding the ligament. If it's a partial tear and you rebuild it, you're going to structurally sever it anyway when you put the new ligament in.
Wasn't it Houston who had a 'partial' ACL tear and it just didn't matter? They had to go cut the thing out to put a new one in.
My memory on this is that if you're rebuilding, there's little functional distinction in partial vs. full tears. The only difference is in the amount of trauma to the surrounding areas. In the case of a full tear, your odds are increased that you ripped up other shit in the process.
But when it comes to the recovery of the rebuilt ligament specifically, there's no practical difference.