Earlier today, Adam Schefter tweeted this:
Vikings’ C John Sullivan underwent a lumbar microdiscectomy Weds and has been placed on IR designated to return. Out until at least week 9.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 10, 2015
As I am apt to do, I immediately disagreed. Not with the story… Shefter doesn’t get too many wrong. But with the Vikings use of the DFR (designated for return) tag. Teams only get one of those per year, and it seemed odd to me that the Vikings would burn theirs here. What stood out to me was that a lumbar microdiscectomy rehab doesn’t seem to mesh well with having a player return during the season. I always point out that I have zero medical background, so I relied on the internets to do some digging. Sure enough, the always-useful Medscape put an RTP at no less than three months. Even better, a study published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine showed that professional athletes return to play from this exact same surgery in an average of 5.8 months. To be fair, there’s a little difference between those two sources, as the study showed about 50% of the players returning at the three month mark. As an interesting aside, I also found a study that focused on how many NFL linemen (offensive and defensive) return to play after this surgery. By that, I mean how many come back, EVER. It’s about 86%. But the numbers I was finding weren’t exactly unanimous in this 3 month outlook. Footballguys’ Dr. Jene Bramel passed this one along, which shows an RTP of 6-8 weeks as a possibility.
With all the dispute here, it’s worth taking a look at my database to get some historical perspective. I’ll have to point out first that back surgeries are one of those areas where I can’t always be certain that I’m comparing apples to apples. A lot of times, the only details you can find are that a player had, “back surgery.” Details like the ones Shefter included are rare. But I have some examples. And I can safely include others where it was known that it was back surgery to correct a herniated disc, which is what Sullivan’s was.
The two best-case ones I have on record are T Eben Britton who missed 5 weeks in 2011, and C Barrett Jones who missed just over 2 months in 2014. Both were detailed only as “minor” back surgeries to fix a herniated disc, so I’m hesitant to include them. But I’d be lying if I threw them out just to fit my argument, so there’s that. Aside from those two, I have six players that fall right in line with the, “3+ months,” that I was reading. One of those, WR Kevin Walter, even goes on the PUP list to start the season, but is unable to ever get back onto the roster. The worst-case scenario was G Eric Steinbach who had surgery in August of 2011 (at the age of 31) and never played another down again.
So where does this leave us? I’m not entirely positive. If we start with that 3 month timeline and project it forward, we’d be looking at Sullivan returning for a December 10th, Week 14 game. It’s hard for me to believe that a team would use their sole DFR designation on a non-QB that they’re not expecting to return until December at the earliest. That leaves me to consider the possibility that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not always right with these things, as evidenced by my stance that Pittsburgh wouldn’t use their IR/DFR on Maurkice Pouncey, which they immediately did. Of course, we won’t know who was right about either Sullivan or Pouncey until they actually come back off the shelf and play. But, as it stands now, I feel like I must be missing something on the Sullivan case. Perhaps the team has details that lead them to believe he’ll be back sooner. If so, I just wish they’d show their math.
