The Details Of Teddy Bridgewater's Knee Surgery Are Gruesome

It’s been nearly two years since then-Vikings (and current Jets) quarterback Teddy Bridgewater suffered a catastrophic knee injury during practice. Now, the doctor who performed the surgeries to repair Bridgewater’s ruined knee, Dan Cooper, has shared some of the details of what went down with ESPN. They are pretty upsetting.

If there’s one thing surgeons excel at, it’s finding evocative ways to describe stomach-churning injuries—who can forget the time Steph Curry’s surgeon described the player’s damaged ankle tissue as “crab meat”?—and Cooper pulls no punches while talking to ESPN. He described Bridgewater’s injury as “horribly grotesque,” and said, “It’s almost like a war wound. Everything is blown.”

Unfortunately, it only gets worse:

“But it’s certainly the worst knee dislocation in sports I’ve ever seen without having a nerve or vessel injury,” Cooper said. “It’s an injury that about 20-25 percent of NFL players are able to come back from. ... It’s a horrific injury. You’ve torn every single thing in your knee and it’s hanging on by one ligament on one side like a hinge.”

Buhhhhh. Every sentence in that quote makes me want to wrap myself in 24 blankets and never move any of my limbs ever again.

The good news is that Bridgewater has looked spry and capable in his preseason action with the Jets. The bad news is that the team probably doesn’t want to keep him and his $6 million salary around to back up Sam Darnold. Here’s hoping they manage to trade him someplace where he can actually get some playing time, and that the rest of us never have to think about how his knee was once hanging from a hinge ever again.

[ ESPN]