Last Sunday was the final football-less Sunday of the year, and as teams make their way through training camp some players are still trying to recover from last year’s injuries. New England Patriots wide receiver Aaron Dobson is one such player.
Dobson suffered a stress fracture in his left foot at the tail end of the 2013 season, and he underwent an operation to have a “permanent” screw inserted into his foot. I put the word permanent in quotations because there seems to be some misconception about the functionality of the hardware. Fantasy football sites continue to hypothesize that the injury is very severe because doctors had to insert a “permanent” screw.
Sure, inserting hardware into a foot can be considered a major surgery, but in theory, there is no such thing as a permanent screw. The purpose of a screw is to permit the body to heal correctly. Once the bones heal and the foot is stabilized, the screws no longer serve a purpose.
This doesn’t mean that they should be removed; it just means that they can be. Calling it a permanent screw gives the impression that they will hold the bones in piece forever, and their removal would again leave the foot in shambles. This is not the case.
It’s similar to learning to ride a bike. Your parents put training wheels on your bike at first to facilitate learning to ride (and to cut down on falling). After a while you mastered it to the point where you didn’t need the training wheels anymore. The screws in Dobson’s foot facilitate healing, but after a while, they wouldn’t serve a purpose. The only difference is that it’s much easier to remove training wheels from a bike than screws from a foot.
Back to Dobson
Dobson has yet to be cleared for practice, despite being given an initial two-to-three month recovery window.
According to a source at the Boston Herald, Dobson didn’t begin running until July, meaning he likely won’t be up to full speed for some time. The doctors who are evaluating him on a regular basis have a better idea of how quickly he can amp up his workload, but in true Patriot form they are playing it close to the belt. He is currently on the Physically Unable to Preform list, and if he isn’t activated before the season begins, he’ll have to sit out the first six games of the season per league rules.
