Packers not taking a big risk
GREEN BAY – As word of Aaron Rodgers’ medical clearance spread across social media Tuesday night, there was at least some surprise in the orthopedic community.
Not even eight weeks after an operation to repair his broken right clavicle, the Green Bay Packers quarterback announced on Instagram he was cleared to play. Rodgers will start Sunday when the Packers travel to play the Carolina Panthers, a pivotal game in their NFC playoff hunt.
When Rodgers returns to the field in Carolina, he will be exactly nine weeks removed from his broken collarbone Oct. 15 in Minnesota. It will be a couple days past the eight-week mark of his Oct. 19 surgery.
“Usually, you don’t get cleared for about three months after that,” sports medicine doctor Luga Podesta said Wednesday morning.
Podesta, a regenerative orthopedic specialist at Bluetail Medical Group in Naples, Fla., is a former training camp medical consultant with the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints. He has not seen Rodgers’ scans, but Podesta said the quarterback’s reported surgery, involving 13 screws and two metal plates fusing together the bones, is consistent with a mid-shaft fracture.
Before clearing someone to play after clavicle surgery, Podesta said he prefers to see “pretty close to 100% healing” in the bone. Rodgers is returning before the standard timeline, but in the NFL urgency can lead to impatience.
“Typically you wait,” Podesta said, “especially in a collision sport like that. You’re going to give it the most amount of time as possible.
“In this case, being the dominant arm and his throwing arm, it all depends on what they saw as they rehabbed him through this.”
One source said Rodgers wouldn’t have been cleared if the decision put him at significant risk of a major injury.
A second collarbone break and resulting surgery wouldn’t threaten a career-debilitating injury unless it was catastrophic, Podesta said. A simple fracture, such as Rodgers is now recovering from, would present a similar recovery time.
There are some potential complications if Rodgers broke his collarbone with the screws and plate still inserted, as well as potential difficulty operating around scar tissue, but those risks would be unlikely to affect his 2018 season.
Podesta agreed with the widely shared view that minimum healing to be comfortable with Rodgers playing would be 80%.
“If he’s throwing relatively normally, that would mean that his bone is healed, or very close to being healed, where at least it’s not moving like you would see with a fracture,” Podesta said.