Notre Dame's Jaylon Smith Tweets About How Great His ACL Recovery Is...NFL Doctor Notices His New Brace and Now It Might Cost Him Millions
FanDuel – Jaylon Smith is regularly cited as a top ten talent in the 2016 NFL Draft, but this is predicated on him making it back from a devastating knee injury.
As Todd Gurley and many others have shown, knee surgery doesn’t knock someone out of the top picks if the athlete can convince doctors that they’re on track to return. A revelation on Thursday may make it impossible for Smith to do so, pushing him way down in this year’s draft.
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Little good news bad news situation here for Jaylon Smith. The good news is that it looks like his recovery is going well, he’s feeling good about himself, he got a whole bunch of retweets and favorites on this so his social media game is looking strong.
Bad news is a former NFL doctor noticed the new brace on his knee and apparently it’s like the worst thing ever.
The “AFO” Chao refers to is an ankle/foot orthosis, a kind of brace necessary to hold the foot in place and allow walking if the nerve (in this case, the peroneal nerve) has damage. Smith’s physical at the Combine was always going to be incomplete, but this issue is going to require further tests. With this condition, it would be noted by any examining physician.
Smith’s nerve could “wake up” or not. This is similar in ways to what Peyton Manning went through after his cervical fusion. It took months for his nerves to come back and allow him to throw again, though there has always been question about his arm strength after the surgery. It would be tougher for Smith to overcome any loss in his legs, due to the speed and agility he would lose.
The nerve damage is a surprise. Smith had no reported nerve damage at surgery and the type of injury he has doesn’t always have nerve involvement.
Alright, well how big of a deal is it?
I asked Dr. Chao what he thought when he first noticed the AFO. “It told me he had a nerve palsy,” he said. “I hope it’s temporary, but it could mean that he needs a ‘redshirt’ year. The early reports of no nerve damage were optimistic, so I hope he ends up okay.”
I asked Dr. Chao where he thought, as a former team physician who was involved in these kinds of decisions, this could drop Smith. “It could make him a Round 3 guy rather than Round 1.” That could be the difference between $10 million and a couple hundred thousand, which would be quite the drop.
Welp. Not ideal.
And I know this dude Dr. Chao was this huge controversial figure who everyone hated and tried to have his medical license revoked. I know Deadspin wrote a bunch of longforms about how much of a scumbag fraud he was. But according to The Big Lead he’s got a 94% success rate since becoming a full time “Twitter Injury Expert,” so probably can’t just discount his opinion entirely. Jaylon Smith will probably want to though.
God damn Twitter. I tried to tell you guys. It’s going to be the death of so many college athletes.