For a lot of people, Victor Cruz’s patellar tendon rupture might’ve been the first time they had heard of this particular injury. It doesn’t happen much, and it certainly happens way less than the usual gaggle of knee injuries. Everyone could tell that it sounded bad, but nobody seemed to know much beyond that… even some of the NFL media who were covering it.
As usual, I’m here to rain doom and gloom down upon all y’all, because that’s just the sort of cheery person that I am. Oh, and I have a strange injury database to back it up. In my world, the term, “patellar tendon rupture,” sort of knocks the wind out of me. Okay, not really. But sort of. As in, I’ve logged just enough of those into my database to know that they’re about as serious as you get, at least in the world of NFL injuries. Sure, there’s the ACL’s and Achilles that are virtually guaranteed to come with season tickets to the IR list. Biceps and pectoral injuries are instantly bad too. There’s the suspicious black hole of missed time that gets swallowed up by Lisfrancs and high ankle sprains. But really, not much rivals the patellar tendon injury for sheer ability to fuck shit up. (Yeah, I’m not a doctor.)
Since most people probably can’t rattle off historical examples of pattelar tendon injuries (let’s abbreviate that down to PT), I’m here to throw a few out there. After all, I did have them just sitting there in a spreadsheet waiting for this to happen. WR Austin Collie wrecked his 2012 year with the same injury. So did WR Brandon Gibson last season. Gibson suffered his PT rupture in Week 8 and was still able to come back in time for the next preseason (though we could start a whole discussion about his effectiveness since then). DB Jim Leonhard tore his PT in Week 14 of 2011 and still made it back in time for Week 1 of 2012. There’s a few others, but you get the idea. So far, so good.
But wait, there’s more. You know how I love to drag out the really ugly examples, right? The absolute worst case scenario where everyone sort of cringes and tries to argue that that isn’t applicable in this case. For patellar tendon ruptures, there’s no doubt that that worst case scenario is WR Greg Childs. Have you heard of him? Be honest. He was a talented and fairly fast (4.55 wheels) WR out of Arkansas. In his junior year at Arkansas, Childs tore the PT in his right knee. He tried to come back too soon, didn’t run so smoothly, and ended up with pretty disappointing senior stats. Still, the Minnesota Vikings liked him enough to take him in the fourth round of the 2012 draft. Can you guess what happened then? In August, he tore the pattellar tendons in both knees. Yeah, you read that right. He sat out all of the 2012 season while he rehabbed. Then he sat out all of the 2013 season while he rehabbed. Then he was unemployed.
Now obviously, Victor Cruz is not Greg Childs. Victor Cruz has no history of patellar tendon injuries. Victor Cruz only injured one knee. Victor Cruz has already put gobs of work into being a fantastic NFL receiver, and it’s safe to assume he will continue to put more gobs of work into this in the future. So in a lot of ways, the historical injury comparison here might be off. All I’m saying is that this is one hell of a brutal injury, one that has the capacity to alter stats, performance, and maybe even career arcs. I think we should keep that in mind before we start on the, “How is Cruz coming in his rehab? Is he ahead of schedule yet? Will he be ready for week 1?” discussion. God, I hate that chatter, and there’s going to be so much of it so soon.
