Lawrence Tynes Sues Buccaneers Over Career-Ending MRSA Infection

Lawrence Tynes hasn’t kicked in the NFL since suffering an MRSA infection in his toe in August 2013, while he was with the Buccaneers. Today he made it clear he blames the team for the infection and the end of his football career, as he filed a lawsuit against the Buccaneers, seeking $35 million in lost future earnings and damages.

If you’ll remember, the Buccaneers sanitized their entire training facility after Tynes and Carl Nicks contracted MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection that essentially eats your flesh. Nicks reached a settlement with the Buccaneers over his infection, for a reported $3 million, last year. A third player, Johnthan Banks, also contracted MRSA, though unlike Tynes and Nicks he seemingly recovered just fine and started 14 times for the Bucs last season.

Tynes will have a difficult time proving his case. It seems pretty cut-and-dried—the Bucs had to cleanse their facility of MRSA and three players contracted it, therefore the team is at fault—but as an actual doctor explains, MRSA is all around us, and it is difficult to prove its existence in any one location. And even if Tynes can prove that it was present at the Bucs facility, he’ll probably still need to prove that his particular strain is the same one found there.