Miami Dolphins center Mike Pouncey is back in the news this week, and for once it’s not for something moronic that he did. You might remember him from such hits as, “wearing a ‘Free Aaron Hernandez’ hat,” or, “just generally being a shitty person.”
This time though, he’s (finally) in the news for something that’s not his fault. Pouncey tore a labrum in his hip, and will be out for quite some time. For those of you who don’t know, a labrum (aside from sounding like an adorable hybrid dog breed) is a ring of cartilage that sits on your hip joint, right where the femur connects to the hip socket. The labrum is the secret sauce that makes the hip do its thing, and it affects everything from joint stability to shock absorption. If you can remember only one thing from my breakdown, it should be that the hip labrum is much more important than you previously knew. Pouncey tore this hip labrum sometime in recent team activities, and he underwent surgery to repair it on June 23rd.
Please tell me that you’re not tired of hearing me point out that everyone in the media is being overly optimistic. If you are indeed tired of that, today is not your day. Find something else to read. Might I suggest a few of my recent time-wasting favorites here and here?
Sure enough, the optimistic timelines are starting already. In a rare defense of the media, I should note that these estimates are way more hedged than usual, so they’re not exactly minimizing Pouncey’s coming rehab. ESPN’s Adam Schefter (the first to do everything) put out this tweet, mentioning that Pouncey would be out, “at least three months.” Again, he did at least say at least, which is less optimistic than usual. Mike Florio at ProFootballTalk followed that up by saying that the three month timeline is, “a very optimistic assessment.”
Okay, so I admit that these timetables are not all that optimistic. The media doesn’t seem to be buying that this is just a simple three month rehab, and they’re making that clear. Given all that, why am I bringing it up here? Because they’re still not telling the whole story. As usual, they don’t seem to want to look at similar historical rehabs and draw any comparisons. Also, as usual, I’m more than willing to do that.
Percy Harvin’s 2013 hip labrum issue is the first that comes to mind. In fact, in Mike Florio’s defense, he even mentions this in his piece. Oddly though, he stops short of telling us how Harvin ended up doing. Harvin suffered a partial hip labrum tear in Seahawk’s training camp, and underwent surgery on August 1st, 2013. He ended up making his return on November 17th, a full three-and-a-half months later. Within one week of returning, Harvin suffered a setback with the same hip labrum, and went on to miss the final five games of Seattle’s regular season. For the purpose of bookkeeping, let’s mark that down as a 3.5 month comeback, but maybe with an asterisk because perhaps that wasn’t long enough and led to his setback. (Just speculation, I can’t prove that.)
Another notable hip labrum surgery timeline can be found with Baltimore safety Ed Reed. Way back in 2010, Reed had April surgery to repair a torn labrum. Reed’s surgery was pretty intense and seems to have addressed some other issues aside from the labrum. ESPN’s Ravens reporter Jamison Hensley quoted Reed as saying that it was, “reconstructive surgery,” which of course never sounds good, but it did include the labrum repair so it’s worth a comparison. Reed’s first game back from that rehab was on October 24th, making his timeline a full six months!
As I always admit, there are all sorts of reasons that these are not perfect comparisons. As usual, I’ll point out at least a few of them. I have no knowledge of how similar these three hip surgeries really were. Players heal at different rates. Teams have different approaches to rehabs, and different needs on the field in terms of replacement depth. Percy Harvin and Ed Reed are skill players that require a high level of speed and agility, whereas Mike Pouncey is more of a stationary player. Further, I’m pulling from a sample size of exactly two players, and that’s dangerously small. The problem is that not too many players suffer this injury at this particular point in the offseason. Typically it’s an injury that occurs during the regular season, and the player has a full offseason to recover.
Even with all these apples-to-oranges comparisons, I’m not sure how you look at these two historical examples and think, “well, let’s start at three months for a Pouncey estimate.” In my opinion, the only way Pouncey makes it back at three months is if he stands on one leg, perhaps a la Daniel LaRusso. Then again, given Miami’s offensive line woes, highlighted here by the always enjoyable Mike Tanier, that might just be their best option. As even the most optimistic writers would probably agree, the likeliest scenario is that Pouncy opens the season on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list, in which case he must miss the first six games. Were I a gambling man (and were any casino taking bets on such ridiculous things) I’d say there’s zero chance we see Pouncey on the field before week 7, an October 19th game at Chicago, and I’m not even confident that he’ll be back that early.
