his week is a big one in Foxborough, Massachusetts for the New England Patriots.
Wednesday marks the beginning of training camp, a time when offseason hopes and regular season truths blur just enough to create the perfect fantasy-fueled euphoria.
Arguably, this is still just the second most exciting day this week.
Sunday will be the nine-month mark of star receiver Stefon Diggs’ ACL tear – a magic number. Nine months, per the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, is the absolute minimum time that an athlete should avoid returning to full-speed play to mitigate injury risk.
Just in time for training camp, the New England Patriots released their list of players who will start camp on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list – a list that Diggs was notably absent from.
This was a shock.
Data shows ACL tears in NFL athletes take an average of 10.5-12 months to fully recover from; for a demanding position like receiver, this number is usually on the higher end of the range. Diggs, a 31-year-old rehabbing from one of the worst injuries in the sport, was therefore supposed to be a gamble in free agency. Even though reports throughout the spring raved about his recovery progress, it was impossible not to take them with a grain of salt. And yet, despite his age and position, he seems ready to start the season on day one.
The anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, is a structure that is critical to stabilizing the knee joint. Tears most commonly occur as noncontact injuries due to a sudden change of direction. The injury has appropriately gotten a reputation as a career-defining setback. 20% of NFL players who tear their ACL never see the field again; those who do return see their productivity decline by about ⅓ compared to their pre-injury selves.
As a sports journalist who also happens to be in medical school, Diggs’ seemingly miraculous recovery captivated my attention. I wanted to understand two things: one, how exactly Diggs was able to recover so efficiently, and two, how this would affect his on-field performance through the fall.