The Minnesota Vikings went into Lambeau Field and pulled out a 24-10 win, but the victory came with a great cost. Quarterback Kirk Cousins ruptured his Achilles tendon during the fourth quarter, and he is now expected to miss the reminder of the season. Below, Dr. Silverman breaks down what forces were at play during the injury and what Cousins can expect in terms of a recovery timeline.
Kirk Cousins’ Achilles Tear
Cousins tore his Achilles in the fourth quarter as he attempted to plant his back foot while preparing to throw the ball. More specifically, the mechanism of injury involves eccentric contraction of the Achilles. The occurs when the force applied to the Achilles exceeds the momentary force produced by the Achilles itself, resulting in the forced lengthening of the tendon. This overloaded the Achilles, which ruptured as a result of the excessive force. You can see the injury below.
Kirk Cousins has torn his achilles, his season is over.
He was having the best season of his career up until this moment.
Heartbreaking for the #Vikings. 🙏pic.twitter.com/gGmaLuhuYu
— NFC North News (@NFCNorthNewss) October 29, 2023
Cousins’ Achilles tendon tear is a little bit different than what we witnessed with Aaron Rodgers. With Rodgers, his leg got caught up underneath him while being tackled, which exerted a large amount of force on the Achilles tendon. In Cousins’ case, he was simply trying to strongly plant his back foot after backpedaling so that he could drive forward and make a strong throw. It’s a move he’s made thousands of times or more over the course of his career. So what was the difference with this dropback?
In the medical world, we refer to something like this as supraphysiologic load on a tendon with moderate internal degeneration. In layman’s terms, it means that over the course of his career, Cousins has suffered microscopic damage and degeneration of his Achilles tendon. All of this minor damage adds up, slowly weakening the strength of the ligament until eventually it takes on more stress than it can handle during a moment of intense pressure. In other words, his Achilles was going to rupture at some point when enough stress was applied because of the previous tendon degeneration.
Like Rodgers, we can expect Cousins to undergo corrective surgery in the near future. In my professional opinion, minimally invasive Achilles repair tends to work best. He should be able to be up and walking in a boot in short order, although we won’t see Cousins back on the field this season. Most Achilles tendon tears require at least 4-6 months of recovery before patients can really get back to strenuous physical activity, which would put his rehab well into 2024. A return for the Super Bowl isn’t in the cards, even if the Vikings were to be able to go on an incredible run.
We wish Kirk the best of luck with his recovery, and tune back into the blog the rest of the week as we dive into a number of other Achilles-related topics during “Achilles Week.”
