Tom Brady Out? Oh No!!

Tom Brady is injured and out for the year. Somehow, some way, I’m sure we and the NFL will survive. Maybe it would help if I ran through a few of the cooler sounding football injuries so everyone can be more informed when their favorite player goes down.

Forget the ACL tear, it’s been done to death. How about a shoulder separation? This came up yesterday – Steelers coach Mike Tomlin was livid when someone accused Ben Roethlisberger of having a shoulder separation. He insisted it is just a sprain. Well, a separation is a sprain – it happens when the connection between the collarbone and the shoulder blade is disrupted. There can be varying degrees, from slight to complete, but, it really is a sprain.

Here’s one of my favorites – the High Ankle Sprain. These can be very bad – they are not a normal ankle sprain of the usual ankle ligaments, but involve an injury to the syndesmosis between the two lower leg bones – a much different matter and often a much longer recovery.

What’s a hip pointer you ask? Nothing more than a severe bruise (sometimes fracture) at the top of the pelvis called the iliac crest (your “hip bone”). These most often occur to football players who take hits in this area – that’s why you see football players wearing those pads that go up over the beltline.

Stingers or Burners are scary sounding injuries, and they can be serious. They occur when the brachial plexus (the network of nerves coming out of the neck and going into the arm) is stretched or compressed as the result of a hit, resulting in a variety of problems.

The last injury I can think of at this moment is the venerable Turf Toe. This used to be a lot more common before the advent of the new softer turf fields, but it still occurs – LaDainian Thompson has one now. Turf Toe is really painful and happens when the player pushes off the toes repeatedly, resulting in pain and irritation at the base of the big toe.

Did you ever try to play anything when your foot hurts? It’s not easy to do, and you often end up just re-irritating it. Turf Toe can be really bad, to the point of affecting careers – Deion Sanders and Jack Lambert come to mind. So there are a few injuries you may hear about in the coming months. If anyone has any other questions regarding any other injuries, contact me – maybe I can shed some light on why your favorite player isn’t playing this weekend..