King: Bridgewater Suffered Nerve Damage, Nerves Not Regenerating

UPDATE, 11:36 AM Central: In the time since I originally posted this story, MMQB has edited the portion of King’s story referencing Bridgewater. It now reads as follows:

I think the most stunning non-draft news of the week, to me, was the Vikings prepping to say goodbye to Teddy Bridgewater after the 2017 season, reportedly leaning toward not exercising his fifth-year option. Just think where we were nine months ago. Bridgewater was the centerpiece of the franchise, the 10-year cornerstone. Then, just before the season started, he took one awkward step on the practice field and blew out his knee and did significant damage, and there reportedly hasn’t been enough recuperation, and here we are. Amazing and sad at the same time.

You can see the original passage from the story below, which does, in fact, state that Bridgewater had suffered nerve damage in his knee. It would appear that King may have gotten the Teddy Bridgewater and Sharrif Floyd knee injuries mixed up.

So, it would appear as though King’s initial report was incorrect. I’m not sure if I like the fact that they sort of “stealth edited” the whole thing rather than doing an actual retraction/correction, but hey. . .not my call.

When quarterback Teddy Bridgewater suffered his non-contact knee injury just prior to the start of last season, one of the few encouraging bits of news about the incident was that Bridgewater had, reportedly, not suffered any significant nerve damage in his knee. While the road to recovery for #5 was going to be long and arduous enough as it was, nerve damage to the knee would make things that much more difficult to overcome and possibly jeopardize his career.

Well, one of the “Ten Things I Think I Think” from Sports Illustrated MMQB writer Peter King in his Monday column seems to fly directly in the face of those reports.

I think the most stunning non-draft news of the week, to me, was the Vikings prepping to say goodbye to Teddy Bridgewater after the 2017 season, reportedly leaning toward not exercising his fifth-year option. Just think where we were nine months ago. Bridgewater was the centerpiece of the franchise, the 10-year cornerstone. Then, just before the season started, he took one awkward step on the practice field and blew out his knee and did significant nerve damage, and there reportedly hasn’t been enough regeneration, and here we are. Amazing and sad at the same time.

We first mentioned that the Vikings were leaning towards not picking up Bridgewater’s option last week, and the deadline for them to do so is tomorrow, 2 May. We also made the point that, if Bridgewater spends the entire 2017 season on the Physically Unable to Perform List, it appears that the final year of his contract would be “tolled” (or roll over) into next year, thereby presumably giving the Vikings another shot at picking up his option if the team feels that he’s made enough progress during that time.

If Bridgewater did suffer nerve damage to his knee, it would lend more credence to the theory that the team knows that he’s not going to be ready for 2017 and is trying to buy themselves another year for Bridgewater to attempt to get healthy again before making a final decision on the matter.

I know that, up until now, we had heard that Teddy Bridgewater had suffered no significant nerve damage in connection with his knee injury. I also know that Peter King has way more sources in way more places than I can possibly fathom, so I’m not about to simply dismiss his report out-of-hand. We also know that we’ve been seeing Bridgewater in videos on various social media platforms doing agility drills and things of that nature.

This just adds another layer to the cloud of mystery surrounding Teddy Bridgewater and his future with the Minnesota Vikings. Hopefully, at some point, some of those clouds will begin to clear and we’ll get a clearer picture of what’s going on.