BLITZ Magazine Demo

hile the rest of the world is enjoying the game on Sunday afternoon, Dr. James Andrews studies the field, a pair of rosters in hand, drawing asterisks next to a handful of names while keeping notes. As senior orthopedic consultant for the Washington Redskins and the singlemost prominent arthroscopic surgeon in the world, Dr. Andrews is in a fantasy football league all his own, surveying the progress of his life’s work - ligament reconstruction, with every throw, catch and tackle made by a formerly disabled player. Stats are worth a lot in this league. “As soon as the day is over, I’m checking the stats to see how good a day they had,” Dr. Andrews said, explaining that while strong rehab and natural ability are most directly responsible for performance, a good showing on the chart is, in a way, a good indication of how well he did his job. His job, more or less, is to correct one of the most devastating and common football injuries, the Anterior Cruciate Ligament tear. Catastrophic collisions like the one that took out Daunte Culpepper in 2005 are one way that an ACL tear occurs. But according to Dr. Andrews, 60 percent of the time it’s a mere stutter-step while heading for the sidelines, like the one that ended Donovan McNabb’s 2006 season, that can destroy the main stabilizing ligament of the knee joint and alter the path of a player’s career, “He guillotined his ACL with the notch of the thigh bone catching it just right.” Dr. Andrews said of McNabb. “It doesn’t take much sometimes, just an awkward little step. They may have done that same maneuver thousands of times and all of a sudden they catch it.” An ACL tear can strike with the randomness and devastation of a bolt of lighting, but in the storm of NFL contact, lighting strikes in high frequency. Be it the full-speed impact of a W Brees recovered from shoulder surgery last season to lead the league in passing Full All Out BLITZ 85

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of BLITZ Magazine Demo

BLITZ Magazine Demo Publisher’s Letter Legends of the Fall: Jim Brown Pre-Game Safety Warning The History of Fantasy Football Phoenix Rising Miracle Worker The Real Jerry Maguire: How Leigh Steinberg Revolutionized the Role of Football Agents Who Is the Big Kid? Post Game

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.