Teddy Bridgewater’s Injury Could Have Been Much Worse

By now, we’ve all heard about the diagnosis on the left knee of Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, that he suffered a ruptured ACL and “significant structural damage.”

Frighteningly enough, it could have been much worse.

According to sports injury expert Will Carroll, Bridgewater suffered what is known as a tibiofemoral dislocation. Or, for our English-speaking audience. . .

It still blows my mind that something so severe could have come as a result of a non-contact injury, but the human body is a weird thing. I think that’s something we can all agree on at this point.

So, how much worse could it have been?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. . .Teddy Bridgewater could have lost his leg if the trainers at Winter Park hadn’t acted as quickly as he did.

Lost. . .his. . .leg. Process that for a moment. I’ll wait.

According to this manual from the folks at Merck, this sort of injury is often accompanied by arterial and/or nerve damage. It’s a damn good thing that the staff at Winter Park acted as quickly as they did, or else things could have been even more awful.

The fact that we’ve gone from a scenario where Teddy Bridgewater could have lost a leg to speculating about when he’s going to return to the football field is pretty amazing. It is to me, anyway. Thank goodness for the Vikings’ training staff, led by Certified Athletic Trainer Eric Sugarman™. They should be commended for their work yesterday, and let’s be honest. . .while I know that getting Teddy Bridgewater back onto the football field isn’t the primary concern, if anyone can get it done, it’s a training staff led by a guy whose rehabilitative methods for leg injuries have been written up in medical journals.

For now, let’s be thankful that things at Winter Park yesterday weren’t much, much worse.