Dr. James Andrews Calls Adrian Peterson, Robert Griffin III Exceptions, Not the Norm

With the recent high profile knee injuries and speedy recoveries of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson and Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III (we think), the man who performed their surgeries, Dr. James Andrews, wants to remind everyone that Peterson and Griffin are exceptions to recovery time and not the norm.

Peterson was able to come back from his injury to have a MVP season, while Griffin is way ahead of schedule and his recovery has been called “super human”.

These two recoveries have caused people to start believing that ACL injuries are not as hard to recover from as they have been in the past because of modern medicine, but Dr. Andrews wanted to let everyone to know that these recovery times do not apply to your average athlete.

“The last thing I’d want people to be thinking is people are coming back quicker and quicker,” Andrews said. “The few individuals that you know of who have come back quickly are what I call ‘superhuman’ athletes . . . There are only a few of those superhuman athletes out there. Their healing potential for some reason is much better than the average patient, but you can’t extrapolate their ability to come back from an injury to the average athlete.”

Every athlete is different and their bodies respond differently to the injuries and surgeries. Because of that, we have to know that everyone needs their own timetable to come back from a serious injury.

“They’re all different,” Andrews said. “There’s still a big spectrum in how they heal and how they come back . . . It’s hard to predict recovery from an ACL surgery, and to say that we’re getting them back quicker than we used to would be false information from my standpoint.”

It is great for the fans to see the stars recover and get back to the field so we can all witness their greatness on the field, but it’s important to keep things in perspective and remember that we shouldn’t take the players for granted.