I’ve got to tell you, I’m a man who loves me some sports hernias. Not on myself, of course, but those of others. Wait, that doesn’t make it sound any less weird, does it? I’ve written about sports hernias (and my love of them) here before, as I did here when I broke down Cecil Short’s odd recovery timeline. (Something’s still not right with that guy’s legs.) Read that piece if you want the full breakdown on what a sports hernia is, as this post is already going to be plenty long without that filler fluff.
Yesterday, reports came out that both Vikings TE Kyle Rudolph and Eagles C Jason Kelce would have to undergo surgery to correct sports hernias. Maybe I should clarify… they don’t have to undergo the surgery together, if that’s the way I made that sound just now. In my geeky little over-focused world, there’s something funny that comes along with news like this… they almost always attach overly optimistic return-to-play estimates. Before I go any further, let’s see two from yesterday:
Per source, Vikings TE Kyle Rudolph’s MRI showed he needs surgery and he will be out for about six weeks.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) September 22, 2014
Starting to hear that @eagles C Jason Kelce likely to have surgery for some form of hernia. Could miss up to 2 months. Eag looking 4 player — Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) September 22, 2014
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that “Eag looking 4 player,” meant that the Eagles were looking for a replacement player. Seriously, I almost Googled, “Eag.” But that’s not the important thing here. What’s important is that reporters are putting a ballpark of six to eight weeks on this recovery. Those two Tweets pretty well match what I’m seeing reported elsewhere, so let’s stick to that estimate.
As always, I’m left wondering where they get those estimates. Quick, to the database! My own records show that (as is usual with these things) that estimate isn’t entirely awful. In 2012, Jabari Greer came back from sports hernia surgery after missing only five weeks. Louis Murphy and Greg Schwartz each missed seven weeks on their recoveries. Greg Jennings missed eight weeks. Chris Ivory missed eleven weeks, but his case was complicated by a serious foot injury as well. So yeah, looking at those guys, sure, why not go with a six-to-eight week ballpark? Have you been reading me long enough to know the answer to that one yet? It’s because that ballpark is completely overlooking a select few players who took much, much longer to recover from the same injury. The elephant in the room on this one is DT Jay Ratliff. Back in 2012, Ratliff missed the last six games of the season while recovering from sports hernia surgery. When he, “came back,” the next season, he missed the first twelve games of the season while he still tried to get right from that initial surgery. By the time he played again (with a different team) he had missed eighteen games!
Sure, Ratliff is only one dude. What we’d really need to see here are more players that took forever to recover. Trouble is, there aren’t really any more. For the most part, this is an injury where players tend to, “tough it out,” and delay the surgery until the offseason. Of course, they play like stinky diaper July garbage in the process, but I guess we’re supposed to admire them anyway. That’s not the point. I’m just saying that when someone puts a window of, “6 to 8 weeks,” on Rudolph or Kelce, maybe they’re not doing their readers any real service.
Here’s where I really enjoy myself. Feel free to stop reading if this makes you uncomfortable. Let’s dig up some old Tweets and see what reporters were predicting about some of those older sports hernia timetables.
Here’s ESPN’s Adam Schefter telling us about Greg Jennings (who ended up missing eight weeks):
Doctors expect Packers WR Greg Jennings to be sidelined about three weeks after he undergoes abdominal surgery Tuesday.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 25, 2012
Even better, here’s Rap Sheet himself (NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport) telling us what to expect from Jay Ratliff’s recovery (he was the guy who missed 16 games):
Source: #Cowboys DT Jay Ratliff had surgery this morning for a sports hernia in Philadelphia. 3-6 week recovery. Unclear if he'll head to IR
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 13, 2012
For my money, it’s interesting to see that, in the span of just two years, they seem to have doubled their estimated rehab windows. You see that, right? They went from somewhere between three and six weeks, all the way up to today’s six-to-eight week estimate. What happened there? I mean, yeah, that’s cool… the new one is closer to what I’m finding with the database. But it makes me wonder where they were/are getting these estimates in the first place. Any chance they read my rants and then start Tweeting, “he should be out for 5-18 weeks?”