No doubt that by now you’ve heard plenty about about Aaron Rodgers and his calf muscle. If you have not (and I envy you) here’s the latest breaking news:
Packers QB Aaron Rodgers’ calf muscle has a slight tear in it in addition to be significantly strained, per… http://t.co/EHDVeLczQv
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 8, 2015
I’m used to being the pessimist, so this is difficult for me to say, but, “meh.” There’s not really any news here. Yes, I know, it certainly sounds like news, but I’m telling you that it is not. Here’s the deal…. a strain is a tear. It’s not exactly potato po-tah-to, but it’s pretty close. What we typically call a strain is in fact a tear of the muscle tissue, often on a very small, even microscopic level. A larger tear, while more severe, is still on that spectrum of muscle strain. Don’t believe me? Look it up here, here, or here. This latest news about Rodgers really doesn’t give us any substantial facts. Schefter mentions that Rodgers has, “a slight tear,” but that really doesn’t clarify anything. By the very definition of a muscle strain, we knew that (on some level) Rodgers had a muscle tear. In fact, Schefter says that Rodgers has both, “a slight tear,” and a, “significant strain.” In reality those could well be the exact same injury.
I’m not saying it’s bad reporting. It does paint a picture that Rodgers’ injury is at least a little more serious than we were led to believe when Rodgers and teammates casually brushed off questions. But this report still doesn’t offer the specific details to back up that suggestion of severity. This report is more alarming than it is informative. I would suggest that, until you hear specifics, you dismiss this as nothing but noise.
Yeah, differentiating between “tears” and “strains” is always fun. In my experience, though, if somebody on the team actually uses the word “tear” it means on a macroscopic level…unless, I suppose, they’re using it to make people think Rodgers won’t start 🙂 Anyway, yeah, a “slight tear” and “significant strain” are the exact same damn thing. A macroscopic tear is a significant strain.
In the past it seems to mostly work out that a stated, quoted “tear” –> multiple weeks missed, or IR (think to a pec, triceps, biceps, quad, hamstring, etc.). “Strains” are much more highly variable. All that said, if I had to guess here, the use of the “slight” modifier means this is just smoke (as stated above, this isn’t exactly false) and Rodgers will play this weekend.
If we actually got grade information regularly on the strains, that would be nice and would tell us which ones are actually tears, but this is a pretty good approximation for most purposes.
Slight edit: …that would be nice and would tell us which ones are actually “tears” (in the NFL parlance), but…
Thanks for the input here! I agree with you in that, in my experience as well, team/player use of the word, “tear,” typically means that the player will miss some games, if not the rest of the season. It’s always frustrating that we have to rely on such sloppy terminology to get any idea of what’s really going on, but that’s the world of coachspeak, right? I’m with you though that Rodgers’ case seems like a smokescreen, especially since he’s been practicing a bit. Can’t see him doing that if this was too serious of an injury.
Right. If Rodgers had a grade 3 strain – which is what teams, I find, usually mean when they bust out the term “tear” (as in, “he tore his groin”) – that would mean his calf muscle basically tore in half and/or ripped off its anchor at one end. In which case I doubt he’d be WALKING, much less practicing, since his calf wouldn’t be…um…working. But I suppose its POSSIBLE.
My best guess is a grade 2 strain here, which some teams refer to as a “partial” or “slight” tear, with the latter being less severe in terms of games missed, and both being less bad than an unmodified “tear”. Usually.