Earlier this year, Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady underwent knee surgery, but didn’t specify the exact issue, saying only that it was “pretty serious.” According to a source who spoke with Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, Brady had a partial tear of the MCL. Meanwhile, people close to Brady claim that it was actually a complete tear of the ligament (Twitter link via NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport).
[RELATED: Brady Won’t Commit To Playing Beyond 2022]
Brady says that he became aware of the injury in the spring, but Stroud hears that it actually occurred in 2019, Brady’s last year with the Patriots. He’s had similar issues before, including an MCL sprain towards the end of the 2018 season. The Patriots — in classic Patriots fashion — declined to disclose the injury.
Fortunately, Brady is expected to be cleared in time for training camp this summer. It won’t be an easy recovery — especially since Brady is in his mid-40s — but he’s proven that he can outrun Father Time. At minimum, Brady hopes to play through 2022.
“Fifty? That’s a long time. Even for me, that’s a long time,” Brady said recently, somewhat countering GM Jason Licht‘s suggestion. “I’ve always said 45 was the age that I wanted to reach and that was my goal. This year I’ll be 44, so next year I’ll be 45. I got a two-year contract. I’m going to be able to obviously play this year and God forbid anything happens but play next year and then see what happens after that.
“If I still want to keep playing, I might be able to do that. And if that’s enough, then that would be enough.”
Lame title
he played the whole dang season with one knee and grandpa still won the supebowl, good god baby jesus!
Hines Ward played his entire career without an ACL. It’s not ideal of course, but you can strengthen your knee via therapy (or what amounts to regular workouts for athletes) and sometimes be more or less normal. I would definitely not suggest it, but the one advantage a complete tear has over a partial is that it’s less painful after the injury itself occurs. A partial tear can, however, sometimes repair itself if the damage isn’t too severe. It will hurt more frequently, obviously, because the nerves will feel it being used.
Not ideal of course, but Brady luckily doesn’t run much and this year had a pretty great offensive line, so didn’t have to move as frequently inside the pocket as he could have, so he was lucky. I can’t imagine that he didn’t feel the tear, whenever it happened. When that thing pops, you have zero doubt what happened, especially in a complete tear. And Brady has had an ACL injury before, so I would think that he’d recognize a major ligament tear when he had it.
Thank you for the insight!
Haha yeah bad luck with my knees in football. Since Brady played through it apparently last year with an operation and not significant time off, it seems like he had a partial tear, probably not serious enough to 100% need immediate surgery (but still always recommended strongly, because continuing heavy activity with it or getting hit would likely tear it more). Still strange that a pro athlete wouldn’t get surgery, but maybe it was really minor. Brady apparently thinks he had a complete tear though, which may be true. A partial will hurt much more frequently as he used it I think, so he may have just did strengthening exercises to compensate as much as he could and put the surgery off until the offseason.
Player safety at its finest! Teams can’t pick and choose which injuries be played through.
Brady choose to play through it. If the team refused to let Brady bow out, NFLPA would have certainly gotten involved.
He just played 18 holes of golf on TV so I’m guessing he will be fine.
Nothing a little duct tape and crazy glue can’t fix.