In the words of today’s youth… OMG. All season, we’ve known something was wrong with Houston Texans Jadeveon Clowney’s right knee. He missed six games starting back in September after suffering a meniscus injury that required arthroscopic surgery, also known as a, “knee scope,” though that terminology often downplays the seriousness of the injury and treatment. Then, even when Clowney was recovered, it was obvious he wasn’t really better. He missed the field most of the season, and didn’t look too impressive the few times he managed to play (four games in all). Clowney had been inactive the last two games with a vague, “knee injury,” designation. Today, word came out that Clowney is undergoing microfracture surgery and will be placed on the injured reserve list, ending his season.
I don’t want to get all dramatic and call microfracture surgery a death sentence…. but yeah, it sort of is. I mean, not exactly. It’s just that it’s not easy to find a really optimistic list of players who have come out on the right side of that surgery in the past. First of all, I should explain why it’s so serious. We all know I’m no doctor, but basically microfracture surgery is a last-ditch effort to create new cartilage in the knee. A doctor goes in there and intentionally does a lot of damage to the surface where your cartilage should be. The damage is very small and creates cracks in the bone, hence that name, “microfracture.” The hope is that the patient’s body will respond by filling in this inflicted, controlled damage with new fresh cartilage. In case that doesn’t sound gross enough already, you should know that the main tool for this is an awl, which I can’t help but think must resemble the common woodworking tool in my garage. Okay, you caught me… I don’t have a garage. Still, it’s an awl. If this doesn’t make you a little ill, read more about the whole thing here. Really though, the important thing here in my mind is that this is often times a last-ditch effort. This is not the procedure that any doctor wants to jump right ahead to. The fact that Clowney already needs this at age 21 is downright scary to me.
But rather than just try to scare you with gross interpretations of surgical procedures, let’s get to the facts. Plenty of NFL players have had this surgery. Some are even people you’d recognize and have gone on to have legitimate NFL careers. Reggie Bush had some form of it in 2008, though it was downplayed as, “microfracture lite,” though that isn’t really a thing. Tracy Porter had it before the 2011 season and still played in Week 1. Marques Colston had it twice, once on one knee in 2009 and then on the other knee in 2011. But that pretty much ends it for the happy-ending club.
Leave it to me and my database to zoom right to the doom-and-gloom worst historical cases, right? Travis Kelce missed all of 2013 with a microfracture surgery, though he seems to have rebounded well this season. Stephen Bowen missed almost an entire year spanning from Week 12 of 2013 to Week 7 of 2014. Jon Beason missed the last 13 games of 2012.
But wait, there’s more! Those ones I just mentioned are far from the worst. You ever hear of Brennan Williams? He had microfracture surgery when he was 22 and never played again. This same injury was a big part of why Pat Angerer hung it up this season at the age of 27 (though he also had some serious concussion issues). Brandon Graham, the #13 overall pick in the 2010 draft dealt with this injury and surgery towards the end of his rookie year and didn’t end up seeing any significant playing time until he was fully recovered in 2012. My favorite example though is Anthony Spencer. Spencer had the surgery after Week 2 of 2013 and wasn’t ready to play again until Week 4 of this season. More importantly, there were some very interesting details that Spencer revealed about his own recovery, such as this one, from Rainer Sabin at the Dallas Morning News:
He also recently spent approximately five months virtually immobilized, unable to move around without the aid of crutches. “I laid down for about 16, 17 hours every day,” Spencer said.
Now I ask you, does that sound like an injury that we can expect Javedeon Clowney to come back from right on schedule? Does it sound like an injury where we should expect the same level of performance? Most importantly though, I would point out that, even if the surgery goes as well as planned, the new cartilage that the body makes is not as strong as the original cartilage that the player had before. This new cartilage will break down easier than the previous cartilage, which is one of the reasons I label this as a last-ditch procedure. Yes, the procedure can buy some time, but really that’s all it’s doing. This is not a permanent fix. That might be easy to forget when we see the longevity of players like Reggie Bush, but this is not the norm. The norm might very well be closer to a player like Da’Quan Bowers, a player who came into the NFL after having this surgery and has been nothing but a bust ever since. Sorry Clowney, it’s nothing personal here… I wish you only health and luck. Hope you can prove me wrong on this one.
