Dr. Flynn: Patriots’ health peaking at just the right time

The Patriots are healthy going into this week’s AFC title game against the Chiefs. It’s about more than an empty injury report this week, though. In last Sunday’s matchup against the Chargers, a few key Patriots players who have been struggling with injuries throughout the season looked dominant, fresh, and healthy.

Dont’a Hightower struggled early this season with what looked like a right knee injury. At the time, he described the injury to Greg Bedard as a chronic one that he was going to have to manage.

“It’s just something I’m going to have to deal with,” Hightower said of his right knee. “That’s really it. It will come and go, but I’m trying to deal with it and keep doing what I’ve been doing. It will go up and it will go down. Hopefully, we’ll continue to stay on top of it.”

Hightower’s performance in last Sunday’s game showed just how well he and the Patriots have stayed on top of the knee injury. Hightower was dynamic, explosive, and downright angry on Sunday. He had a career-high eight quarterback pressures on Rivers, as well as this extracurricular one.

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Julian Edelman reported for training camp after an ACL tear he suffered a year earlier. The 32-year-old wide receiver had a slow start, in part due to his four-game suspension for violating the NFL's policy on performance-enhancing substances. During his first three months back, Edelman did not reliably look himself. Sure, he had some great catches and flashes of the fleet-footed Edelman we’re used to. At times, however, he would come up from routes lame, grabbing at a painful foot or tossing his helmet in frustration.

In the past month, however, something has changed. Last weekend was truly a new season for #11. His game was quick as ever, his cuts were sharp and precise. It seems that whatever was ailing his foot has finally improved. However, I think a lot of his improvement has to do with his ACL being fully healed. Many athletes return to sports between nine and 12 months after ACL surgery. However, we typically do not see those athletes return to “themselves” until about 18-24 months postoperatively. This is partly due to physical healing and “ligamentization” of the ACL graft which doesn’t happen until that timeframe, and partly due to the athlete psychologically getting used to their knee’s “new normal.”

Edelman is making crazy efforts like this a year and a half removed from his ACL reconstruction, and his partnership with Tom Brady couldn’t be peaking at a better time for the Patriots.

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Tom Brady was dealing with a left knee injury after the Tennessee game in November. He was clearly not stepping into throws and appeared much more wary of contact than usual. We recently had our suspicions confirmed that Brady was, indeed, dealing with an MCL sprain for the last month of the season.

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An MCL sprain for Brady is a bigger deal than for other players. Why?He tore his MCL back in 2008 and, while the MCL can often heal on its own, in Brady’s case it was felt best to reconstruct the ligament. Unfortunately, that is the site that got infected and led to multiple procedures to clean it out after the initial ACL surgery. An injury to an area of the joint with that history can take a bit longer to rehab, but it proved to be something the quarterback could play through, albeit not looking his typical all-pro self.

The great news is that the knee looks healed and Brady is back to stepping into his throws and dodging the rush with greater mobility. The MCL injury should not have any long-term effects.

Rob Gronkowski has been fighting some significant injuries this season. He has had three back surgeries for disc problems — in general, the next option for a patient in that situation would be a spinal fusion. In that surgery, multiple levels of the spine are fused together to limit motion and, in turn, pain. Unfortunately, that’s not a surgery that is compatible with continuing to be a tight end in the NFL. So, he has been playing through the pain. Gronk has also been dealing with an ankle injury since early in the season which further limited his ability to move.

Cue the postseason. After a break for wild-card weekend, Gronk came back with a vengeance. There is no question that he is still battling an injury. His game has changed — he’s blocking more and running up the seam much, much less. But Gronk played an incredible game. On his one reception, he shed two tackles before finally being taken down by three defenders — vintage Gronk.

I can’t imagine it’s been easy for him to embrace such a drastic change in his responsibilities this late in his career and this certainly could have accounted for the emotional side of his challenges this season. What I saw last weekend, though, was a guy who has embraced his role whole-heartedly and, in turn, became a huge part of the Patriots’ successful running game.

I suspect that this is Gronk’s last season in the NFL. Looking back, I hope he can be as proud of this play where he blocks two defenders from Sunday’s divisional round matchup as any of the end zone acrobatics we’ve seen from him over the course of his career.

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Managing any one of the injuries I listed above is difficult for both the player and the entire staff responsible for player health. I give the Patriots players, their strength and conditioning team, their training and medical staffs, and all of the other professionals involved an enormous amount of respect and credit for getting these key athletes to where they are this post-season. The key this week will be seeing if players like Rob Gronkowski and Dont’a Hightower can maintain the same high level of performance on Sunday without the benefit of an extra week of rest.