I’ll never skirt the fact that I’m a diehard New England Patriots fan, and I’d like to think that that doesn’t cloud my judgment too much. (Yes, I know, fat chance, right?) But then I read stories like this, and it bugs the crap out of me. Part of me is bugged by the fact that Talib is taking a parting shot at his previous team, and part of me is bugged by how sloppy the medical jargon is. If the dude is going to throw around some big accusations, the least he could do is look into how precise his medical terms are.
Here’s how it unfolded. Former New England Patriot cornerback Aqib Talib hit the open market after the 2013 season ended. The guy was mostly great in his year and a half with the Pats, but he had some injury concerns for sure. He missed three games for the Pats in 2013, and while that’s not an immediate deal-breaker, it’s something a team might be concerned about. He ended up landing a huge deal with the Denver Broncos. As soon as he got to Denver, he made some accusations that the Pats play dirty with their injury reports. Specifically, when asked about his 2013 hip injury, Talib said,
“That was in Tampa, that was the right side. I haven’t had a hip problem since Tampa. The Patriots have their way of reporting stuff, but I haven’t had a hip problem since Tampa. The injury I had was actually a quad injury, it was reported as a hip injury, but that’s how they do things.”
In response, Patriots beat writer extraordinaire Mike Reiss had this to say on the matter. Reiss is right as usual, but there’s another layer to this that stands out to me based upon my injury research. Quite simply, Talib is being sloppy at best and misleading at worst with his words.
In the week six game of 2013, Talib was injured. That part we all seem to agree on. The reports I found called it a, “hip flexor strain.” There were no new developments with the injury, and nobody seemed to have a different diagnosis. The only dissenting opinion seems to come five months later when Talib says it was actually a quadriceps injury, not a hip injury. The media seemed to pick up on this dispute and report it without ever really looking further. In my mind, the big question that the media should ask is, “So, what’s the difference?” Well it turns out there really isn’t much of a difference at all. The hip flexors are a muscle group that starts at either the spine or hip bone and extends down to the femur, or thigh in general terms. The quadriceps, on the other hand, are a group of muscles located on the front of the thigh…. the same basic area that the hip flexors attach to. To make it even cloudier, one of the quadriceps muscles is actually one of the hip flexors!
So Talib is trying to make it sounds like the Patriots were being inaccurate (and he implies misleading) by calling his injury related to his hip. But even if Talib is being entirely truthful and it was a quad injury, that wouldn’t necessarily indicate that it was not a hip flexor injury! We’re talking about a pretty similar, overlapping group of muscles in the same area of the body. Depending on the exact injury, this could easily be the medical terminology version of, “tomayto,” vs, “tomahto.” Except that in this case, one side claims that the other side isn’t just wrong, but that they are being deceitful and manipulating the rules.
I’m not saying the Patriots are always great with their injury reports. There’s a certain tight-lipped approach and general vagueness the Pats use that can make my job maddening. But there’s no reason to think that this is a case of anything fishy, and in my mind, it simply comes off as sour grapes from a player who should be happy that he just signed an amazing contract with a great team. Now go ice up, son.
