Happy Championship weekend, everyone! It’s been a tumultuous week for Patriots fans - riding high after a great win against Tennessee, followed by news that Tom Brady injured his throwing hand and missed a Thursday practice before the biggest game of the season. I delayed my usual Friday mailbag in hopes of more information out of Foxborough on the particulars of his injury … naive and wishful thinking! Things are starting to look up, though, for the quarterback’s ability to play through his throwing hand injury. I’ll discuss why that is in this weed’s special Saturday Championship weekend edition of the BSJ injury mailbag…
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Doc, Felger reporting a cut on the knuckle that required stitches. IMO, that’s better than ligament damage. If true, how does that impact his throwing? How do you treat that to play? (Edward Ingraham, @Whofan70)
There has been so much speculation about Brady’s injury on social media. We still do not have any confirmed reports on the specifics of the injury. That being said, over the past 24 hours, most of the rumblings have pointed towards a laceration of the hand over one of the knuckles or in the web space between the thumb and index finger.
Here are some hypotheticals based on that report…
- If this is a simple laceration with no damage whatsoever to the underlying joint, Brady will play and play close to his normal form. The laceration could be painful, could even open up during the game, but it should not cause much of an issue. I would not worry about accuracy or ball security in this situation.
- If the laceration is a result of the finger (or thumb) being bent back so far that the joint dislocated and a bone poked through the skin causing the laceration, there is a much greater range of possibilities. Depending on the finger and the joint involved (thumb vs finger, proximal joint vs distal joint), he’ll still play Sunday but there could be some concerns about ball security and accuracy.
- If there was any ligament damage to the MCP joint of the thumb, that would be the worst-case scenario in my opinion. Reports don’t sound like that’s the issue, but these reports are still unconfirmed. With a ligament injury, Brady could still likely play, but may require definitive surgery in the offseason. The reason I bring this up is that I have heard reports that the thumb was bent so far back that the skin between the thumb and index finger tore. This type of injury could also injure the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) of the thumb, which is the same injury that Jacoby Brissett dealt with last season.