I told you so! Well, not in particular, just in the general nagging theme of much of my writing. Hear me out and let me explain. I spend a ton of my time criticizing common injury rehab timelines. I’m sure you’ve seen me do that plenty by now. My award-winning, critically-acclaimed work was even featured on Deadspin a few weeks back. (Note: this work was neither award-winning nor critically-acclaimed.) The typical bee in my bonnet is that the generic estimates teams, players, and reporters hand out don’t really encompass a lot of the possible outcomes. They’re one-size-fits-all, and we all know how well that works in real life.
I bring this all up because of a specific development that came out today. The Detroit Lions are placing TE Joseph Fauria on injured reserve and ending his season because he still hasn’t gotten over his left high-ankle sprain. He missed seven weeks (six games plus a bye) with the injury earlier this year. Fauria made it back for a mostly ineffective four games, and will now miss the final three games of the season. It’s still hard to tell exact details, but always-reliable Lions beat reporter Tim Twentyman said that Fauria told him he had never gotten back to full health after the first injury. Because of this, we can’t help but interpret this as an extension of Fauria’s previous injury. Perhaps this latest ankle injury was a reinjury, but we know it is to the same left ankle, so we cannot logically think that the two are unrelated. In my database, I lump re-aggravations of previous injuries together so as to represent the full impact of the original injury. So in this case, I’d lump Fauria’s original seven week absence together with this final three game absence, and we’d be looking at Fauria having missed ten weeks with a left high-ankle sprain.
There we have it… Fauria has missed ten games with this particular injury. But back at the beginning of Fauria’s original injury, had I said, “Fauria might be out ten weeks,” I would’ve been seen as a pessimistic stat-head buzz kill. Let’s be 100% clear… I never predicted Fauria would miss this much time. I didn’t predict anything about Fauria. I am not right in any sort of a “called shot” way where I outlined this (or any) particular scenario. But I’d still like to point out the Fauria’s ten week absence does fit into the range of rehabs for this injury, even if it is towards the extreme end of the chart. Here’s a chart showing 66 NFL players who suffered high-ankle sprains in the 2010 through 2013 seasons.
This chart does not include Fauria (or tons of players I logged this season). But you can see that Fauria’s ten week absence would not look alarmingly out of place on that chart. Like I say, Fauria’s case is not exactly normal, but it’s not exactly remarkable either. It is this larger range of possible rehab outcomes that I am often highlighting and presenting here on my site. So no, I never even came close to calling this exact outcome for Fauria. But that’s also a bit of what I’m trying to avoid. Rehab outcomes will vary greatly from player to player and injury to injury. All I’m trying to do it keep that wide range in mind and make sure that nobody gets too comfortable with the typical, “player will be back in about four weeks,” garbage. Next time I criticize a too-concise high-ankle sprain rehab estimate here, I’ll ask you to remember back to Joseph Fauria and keep him in mind.
