September 3, 2025 • 49 mins
NFL injuries aren’t just headlines—they’re season-shaping storylines. In this episode, Will Sanchez and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Grant Garcia break down the biggest injury concerns heading into the 2025 season and explore how cutting-edge recovery tech is changing the game.
Key Injuries: Stafford (back) • McCaffrey (Achilles) • Hill (core) Slater (patella) • Brooks (ACL) • Hutchinson (leg fracture)
Recovery Tech: GPS wearables • Underwater treadmills • Force plates Helmet sensors • Sleep trackers
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Chapters:
00:00 – Welcome & Giants fan misery
02:00 – Sponsor shoutout: The Recovery Shop
04:00 – NFL kickoff & international games (São Paulo, Madrid, Berlin, London)
06:30 – Travel, jet lag & sleep risks for athletes
07:30 – Quarterback carousel: Rodgers, Jones, Darnold & more
09:00 – NFL Tech: GPS wearables & fatigue tracking
13:00 – Underwater treadmills & joint recovery
16:30 – Force plates & ACL/landing asymmetry
18:30 – Sleep trackers & why sleep = performance
24:00 – Helmet sensors, concussions & NFL safety rules
28:00 – The $$$ cost of NFL injuries
32:00 – Key player injuries to watch:
• Matthew Stafford (back issues)
• Tyreek Hill (core/oblique)
• Rashawn Slater (patella tendon rupture)
• Christian McCaffrey (Achilles tendonitis)
• Jonathan Brooks (ACL/biologics)
• Aidan Hutchinson (tibia/fibula fracture)
45:00 – NFL trivia: Left-handed quarterbacks in history
49:00 – Wrap up & listener thank you
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Welcome to Sports Doc Talk. I'm Will Sanchez, along with our
orthopedic surgeon in sports medicine, specialist Doctor
Grant Garcia. He is not only a pretty face, he
is not someone that you're just going to listen to and watch on
social media, but he is one of the top doctors out there.
So check out his credentials. Doctor Garcia, how are you?
(00:39):
I'm fairly certain that that intro changes every single time.
I have no idea where it's going,so I just have to sit there and
smile. I'm good.
Yeah, I know it's a it's a scorching day in Seattle, but
super nice. So we're we're lucky we're
soaking up the last few weeks ofsummer so. 100% And as the title
showed, we're going to talk a little bit about the 2025
(01:00):
kickoff. We're going to get into some key
injuries for some of the playersand and we're just going to have
some fun banter because this is what we do is football season.
I'm super excited about the season because as some of you
know, we are miserable New York Giants fans and once a while
long time ago, we were very happy with our team celebrating
(01:21):
Super Bowl championships at the defeating the New England
Patriots. But we've been suffering.
A long time ago. And I, I don't know about you,
it, it hurt a little bit. I felt good for him, but it hurt
a little bit to see Saquon win the championship more because he
was with the Eagles and anyone else, so I'm still trying to get
over the season. What are your expectations for
(01:42):
the Giants before we kick off this show?
I, I mean, the problem is that this they're so hyped right now.
They're like what they're, they're so hyped.
This is like one of the best I've ever seen the introductions
for the team. I think the challenge will be
like, we'll see what happens in those first few games.
The NFC East is tough. They have three really good
(02:02):
teams they play against now, andthere's no schmuck quarterbacks
or anything. I mean, it's just it's legit.
Every team is legitimate. Yeah, they ranked the New York
Giants as the hardest schedule for this upcoming season out of
all 32 teams. That's what they need for so and
so poorly last, yeah. Exactly.
You had the worst record where here's the hardest schedule, go
(02:23):
off and be somebody. They've got the Chiefs, they've
got the Lions, Minnesota, the NFC East, the AFC West.
It is going to be a gauntlet. And you know, if I have a have
trouble sitting there on Sunday trying to recover from the pain
and misery, hopefully not from the Giants.
This is not the same, but it's aweird Segway.
(02:46):
Let's shout out to the recovery shop.
Can they help me recover on a bad Sunday?
They might be able to they've got all sorts of things.
So you know, the the nice thing is that this is again, I even
today I had patients asking about this.
So you know, for surgeons, it's nice to offer to your patients.
They can use this for things extra they want, right?
They want to have a nice machine.
(03:06):
They want to do Rebliss. They want to have other
different innovative tools to get them back.
We're starting potentially working on more nutrition
supplementation and other thingsas well.
So it's all part of this sort ofpackage deal you can have for
your recovery. And the patients have been
elated with the service and I have been as well as a as a
surgeon to give it to my patients and hear about it.
(03:26):
So it's just another thing that makes that whole post operative
recovery process good. So thanks again for our
sponsors. And shout out to Mike B at the
recovery shop. So please reach out to Mike B.
He can help everyone out there. So we, we can't thank Mike and
the entire team enough. Listen, 2025 is going to be real
interesting. Before we get into some of these
(03:48):
injuries, we, you know, we're going to have a little bit of
fun. We're going to talk a little bit
of tech. We'll talk about some injuries.
This is not a fantasy football show.
But if you're a fantasy footballfan and some of the people that
we talked about help you make a decision whether you're going to
grab them in the first round or maybe you hold up to the second.
Hey, listen, we're we're we, we can help you in many different
ways. But looking at the 2025, we have
(04:10):
some NFL fun facts. The international games.
We know that football is global is king of sports, at least here
in in the United States of America.
Soccer rules the world globally,but for for us here it is.
Football League record 7 games. Oh, look at this.
What's that that game up there? Chiefs versus Chargers, where
(04:32):
they're playing at Doctor Garcia.
Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo, what?
What? What are your thoughts on that
one? That's pretty cool.
That's gonna be awesome. That's like, yeah, that's a big
deal. That's a long flight, though.
That is a long flight, but that'll be really interesting.
That's, I mean, Sao Paulo's off to the hit.
I mean, they do the F1 in November, so they've been really
(04:54):
big and they had a game there orthen they have a game there last
year or two years ago. I thought the Chiefs, I thought
the Eagles played at some point,if I remember correctly.
Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, I'm not.
I'm not sure. If not I would be lying.
But the fact that they're getting them, that you can't
have enough good, good games at Dublin.
Obviously we'll see a lot of college football games.
They've been going out there. I know Notre Dame is a big fan
(05:16):
of going out there. Lots of Guinness.
We have a good time. Madrid.
I love Madrid, I love Spain, Dolphins and the Commanders.
I'm hoping that the Dolphins winknockout the Commanders because
like we said, we're Giants fans and we could.
Anytime we can get a loss for one of those NFC East teams, we
appreciate it. London three times, Berlin once.
(05:37):
Real quick, this is not the topic of the show, but concerns
with doctors, teen doctors. When you're traveling so much,
you're traveling so far, making sure the recovery.
What are some of the things, or at least highlight one specific
thing, that a team doctor will make sure that his their players
are doing? I mean, as a team physician,
(05:58):
your biggest concern is not really the injuries, but rather
sort of the sleep performance. We've talked about this.
We should probably get someone who manages sleep and athletes
because I think that would be a really good thing.
I know we have some other episodes coming up that talk
about the mental aspects, but the sleep is no joke.
I mean, that is one of the hardest things for these
athletes to deal with is how youchange the sleep time zones.
(06:20):
I mean, I do a lot of consultingthings and I'm flying 24 hours
down to Florida and back and, and that isn't a joke.
And again, I'm not having to perform mentally, maybe a little
bit physically, but not constantly doing that.
I mean, the time zone is a big deal.
I mean, this is they're probablygoing to leave.
I think they leave a little bit earlier, right, If it's a
probably a few extra days, but generally they make them come
(06:41):
right back on that next flight out for the following thing.
So it's hard. I mean, the good news is they're
all younger and healthier than we are, so they can handle it a
bit better. But that that is a that's a
topic in of itself is the the challenges of sleep.
We brought it up once before. I think there are a couple times
in our show, but that is a big deal.
Yeah, I mean, we think it's important to just kind of
(07:03):
highlights, but that's part of the recovery and that, you know,
that's part of everything that these players can are concerned
about or could possibly lead to injuries.
Quarterback carousel, 12 new starters.
Who knows, it might be more. We just know that that's kind of
the way here in Seattle. Sam Darnold, goals from
Minnesota Vikings, now the starting quarterback for the for
(07:24):
the Seahawks. The Raiders get, you know, those
old Seahawks quarterback, he's there.
And our old friend Daniel Jones,he's going to be the starter for
the Indianapolis Colts. So lots of moving and shaking.
I mean, Aaron Rodgers with the Steelers, you name it.
Lots of storylines. This is just the classic NFL
(07:46):
It's just a shake around the box, grab the quarterback and
hope that there's a there's a chance he's better than the last
time we got them. You know I.
I we'll see. I mean, we, it worked with Sam
Darnold, but you know, it's, it's unfortunately the roulette
doesn't always work in everybody's favors.
So hopefully the fresh start forthe Giants is the one that wins
out. Yep, and we will have Russell
Wilson. We'll see how long he stays
(08:07):
there before they'll start calling for the dart man Jason
Dart. So anyway, let's talk about
this. We want to talk about some of
the NFL tech and this was reallyfascinating because the NFL
always, you know, stand ahead oftechnology.
They're using different tech fortheir players, for their
(08:30):
organizations. I think it was a year ago,
something like that. I was making fun of the urinals.
That's a whole other conversation if anybody want to
goes. Back My favorite NFL tech.
That is my favorite. Monitoring hydration there with
the urinals, but just to kick itoff, the Catapult GPS with speed
load and fatigue. Once you talk about this and how
(08:52):
that's beneficial to some of these teams as they're
partnering with Catapult for themonitoring.
I mean, the one thing you alwaysknow is, like, all these teams
that go after the NFL first, right?
These are these companies, right, 'cause if they can get
them on board, they're willing to spend the money for their
players to give them a little bit of an edge.
And everyone's looking for that.I mean, you go into these team
(09:12):
locker rooms and they've got tech you've never seen before.
They're like, oh, this is a startup, this company's a
startup, and we're trying to getthis.
So the idea here is obviously you're using this GPS wearable
technology and then you're really going to get a lot more
detailed informations like again, like how fast you doing,
what kind of load are you putting on the body?
And then by that, there's some calculations that can do
(09:34):
algorithms to determine fatigue.And I think the key here is we
always say like as a, as a physician on the team, you want
to know when the players to fatigue.
It's very hard to figure that out.
And so if we can find an algorithm or proprietary
information that'll tell us, hey, this player is like pretty
close to getting injured or like, you know, you know what I
mean? Like you've seen in the NFL,
(09:55):
you've seen in little, you've seen in all levels of football,
the players like you're like, you're out, you know, and the
coach is yelling them to come out and they're like, screw you,
screw you. I'm staying in, right?
Like, so can we? It's the same thing with the
concussions, right? They have the helmets, not as
much in the NFL, but our high school team, she's got we, our
trainer has a helmet monitor, right?
When they get hit really hard, we'll know before the player
will know. And so the idea is that like,
(10:17):
can we track all these things inreal time?
Because as much as they're players, they're also, they're
owned by the, by the NFL teams and there's a lot of money on
Stan if they get hurt, which will show about how much the
injuries cost. It is a massive amount of money.
So can we find a way to reduce injuries?
And yeah, he says, listen, this person needs this, this guy
needs 2 downs, right? He's, we use them on 1st, let's
(10:39):
save them for 3rd or 4th or on the 4th down, we're going
forward or something. So it, it's really important all
that stuff. I think that other the other
tech you want to talk about, that next one's going to be
really interesting because that is something that's more
universal I think with a lot of people.
Yeah. And right before I get to that,
and I know that you're on the orthopedic side.
So you're you're you're kind of getting them, you know, after
(10:59):
the injury has been, it has happened.
But is there anything that you're doing, or at least the
people that you're working with,whether it's a watch or whoop or
anything like that, that you're kind of incorporating, or at
least the partners that you haveare incorporating for the
regular, you know, the regular Joes that are trying to recover?
(11:20):
I think, I think the answer is we're always looking for
something. But the problem you have is the
market's really saturated, right?
The, the challenge here is like if I go and sell a watch, I'm
competing with Apple, right? Like there was an article I read
about one guy that had a fitnessapp and he was basically
bankrupt until LeBron James happened to be the one of 200
(11:40):
people that bought the watch. And it was like his last dollar.
And LeBron James like showed it off in a commercial by accident.
And he went from that to like $100 million in like a couple
weeks by accident because just happened to be wearing his
device. So, and I've worked and I've
been part of discussions with, you know, is it as a on beam
social media presence and being on the podcasting, I get emails
(12:04):
all the time for new tech saying, Hey, you want to look at
my new product this, that and that.
And, you know, it's, it's reallycommon.
So unfortunately there is a lot of stuff that we do.
So it's always hard to tell and to get really involved in one
particular thing. And I, I think that that I think
that that's where more of the physical therapy side of things
in people coming injuries, but also just really about stuff
like this, right? Can we talk online and say, Hey,
(12:25):
listen, you really need to be using your watch like your heart
rates dropped. Like we don't have enough good
stuff out there yet. It's all really expensive and it
requires, you know, subscriptionbased and it also requires
someone the algorithm to do it in like what they really need to
do is like partner with a place like Apple or or Fitbit or
things like that. And you basically wear it on
your wrist and it says you're getting fatigued like you were
(12:47):
at you were at a 64% chance of injury.
You know, like from the minorityreport type of like algorithms
like AI, right? Can we predict regular people
getting injured like you're skiing and like you're just out
of control. Like your legs are, your legs
are gassed, like you're not firing everything In Sync.
But again, it's there's so many different muscles they have to
monitor, but can you think aboutdifferent things?
(13:07):
So like, you know, maybe we're coming up with an idea.
Maybe we just let on some information that we shouldn't
have, but who knows? So anyhow.
Yeah, I, I love the example thatyou just gave because I remember
one time I went back up snowboarding, I was like, I got
one more ride in me, you know, And I got up there and I maybe
got a quarter way down and I waslike, Oh no.
Like my knees, I was starting, my legs were getting shaky and I
(13:29):
was like, I still got to get offthis mountain and I should have
stopped when I was still feelinggood.
I should have went to the clubhouse, get the hot cocoa,
kind of relax, wait for the friends to finish off their last
run instead of pushing it. Anyway, I digress.
This is what happens. This is what we do.
Let's hop on to the next tech onthe underwater treadmills, joint
protection, things like that. Let's talk about this joint
(13:52):
protection and benefits of having these underwater
treadmills, especially for theseNFL teams.
This is huge. I mean, we were in the White
Sox. They had underwater pools.
The underwater treadmills are expensive, but they're really
nice. It's almost, I actually would
think this is a little bit better than the the G
treadmills. You guys know they're very hard
to find, but you basically strapyourself in and it lower.
(14:15):
It lowers the resistance you canhave on there.
I've had a couple high level players, soccer players and
basketball players that are basically almost pro level to
pro level and they usually you use this and you can see the
recovery difference is huge, right.
But again, the challenge here islike, how do you get access to
this? Like, I'll be honest with you,
outside of working with the teams, I've never even seen an
underwater treadmill. So like, it's not like you go to
(14:35):
the gym and you're like, you're like, oh, there it is, right.
Like it's expensive. Like they have these treadmills
actually for dogs that go underwater, but it's I don't
think it's the same, the same caliber.
But nonetheless, the the idea isthat obviously it's just like
blood flow restriction, right? You want to put load on the
joint, you want to have mobilityon the joint without putting a
lot of load, right. So when I tell patients like you
(14:57):
need 25% of your weight on the joint, well, you know when you
get in the water, you lose a lotof that weight, right?
It's buoyant. And so can you do this therapy
low load the joint, not 'cause inflammation and then get
stronger, right? The, the whole key between like
PRP and all these other injections is can we find a way
to get that knee to not be so swollen so that you can
(15:18):
strengthen the area around it And then therefore you can
recover back to the level you were at without having continued
setbacks? I mean, like, I, like I asked
multiple patients today that arerecovering from my surgeries.
You know, the number one complaint was like, hey, my knee
still feels a little bit swollen.
It still feels a little bit sore.
I feel like I can't get the strength I want back because
it's still a little bit bothersome.
That's pretty part. That's the part of the normal
recovery. But women have found a way to
(15:38):
reduce that, right? If all these patients just went
to the underwater treadmill, they could get it back.
So this is a big deal. Now, again, we've talked to and
we will talk to more strength coaches for professional teams,
right? And these strength coach special
teams will tell you that everyone has different
philosophy, right? There's a there's a general
philosophy. But these strength and kitchen
(15:58):
coaches, which we we don't want to let onto new episodes coming
up, but we've had a few we've talked to and that, you know,
they, if they have a different philosophy, they'll say, hey, I
think I know I tried the most best for me, this is best for
me. You know what type of thing.
So they're not always going to have the same stuff.
Now again, they also, they're very competitive, right?
So someone's like, yeah, the Chiefs have it.
I'm sure the other teams are going to be considering it.
So. Oh yeah, definitely Force
(16:21):
plates, jump asymmetry. We're going to talk about that.
They're they're saying that the teams are known to use force
plate plate testing. Talk about force plates and how
they're so beneficial for recovery.
Yeah, well, this is huge. I mean, we just saw this
recently. You probably saw the when we
showed the pro mobility video for Driveline and you saw the
(16:45):
guys jumping. That's the forest plates.
So the idea behind this is obviously asymmetry is humongous
problem. I mean for especially for soccer
players, right, that increase the risk of ACL like these
females, they land they land in valgus.
So I had, you know, three femaleor more than maybe four female
ACL just today, this morning. And and they were all young
(17:06):
females and they probably landedin, you know, they were
attacked. They were injuries like on the
field somewhere hit somewhere every but females are a much
more common risk. And so something like this, you
know, in athletes to find the the how you're how you're
landing. So that's a preventative
situation, but also for professional athletes,
especially for these professional teams, if the
players like, Oh, I feel great, but they're like, wait a second,
(17:28):
no, you're not great, right. Like this thing is off from this
one. And when we look at a testing,
we generally do asymmetry for Acls in recovery.
And so if you are do, if your strength is down, your power is
down, you have imbalances in that one knee, You're not ready
to go back right, even from a short period of time.
But you know, the most commonly studied injury is Acls.
(17:50):
But there's so many of the things that we do and there's so
many long recoveries, like it's really important for you to have
this in the jump. Asymmetry is that whole motion
from the initial take off to landing.
And that's really where the power comes from.
So you really want to make sure you're powering the whole leg
appropriately. Yeah, and that was a great segue
to talk about, you know, if you haven't checked out our episode
(18:11):
with driveline, that that's a good one.
So check that one out as well. We're going to go on to the next
one. Sleep trackers.
We've talked about this in the past.
I, I got to be honest with you, sometimes they make me a little
bit nervous. I got to be honest, I wake up, I
saw that I didn't sleep as well.So obviously if you're going to
work out, it kind of tells you. Take it easy.
(18:34):
But at the same time it makes mea little bit nervous going.
I hope I got a good night's sleep because if not, you know,
it makes me feel a certain way. I don't know, I'm a little bit
weird. I don't know if anybody else
feels that way, but when it comes to sleep trackers, great
to know how I'm going to preparefor the activity level in my day
and how hard I'm going to hit the gym.
But the same time there's kind of like this competitive thing
(18:56):
going, you know, I want to hit an X amount of percent on my
sleep recovery. There it is.
I don't think that you're weird.I think that that's exactly what
your other Co host does. So I think that what you're
feeling is totally normal. That's the point of these apps,
right? They get you hooked, they get
you you're like addicted to yoursleep.
But the problem you have is thatyou this is so we had a while
(19:21):
ago now, maybe multiple years, we had someone come in who used
to be a Navy SEAL and they do a lot of corporate stuff.
So As for surgeons, we're known for high stress environments,
very similar to some of these some stressful things, and they
do a lot of stuff with professionals like that or
athletes and help them get theirstuff back.
So companies will kind of monitor the sleep and actually
help working with your staff andsay, hey, listen, you got 6
(19:42):
surgeons on your staff or you'vegot 20 players or 53 players on
your team and half of them are like totally under slept.
All right, So that is actually ahuge deal.
We were just this will be a goodtopic.
Maybe we can have this later will.
But longevity, right? That's just athletics.
But in longevity, write an article just.
Top 10 won't go through all of them, but one of the number one
(20:02):
things is outside of exercise was sleep.
You're writing it down. I like it, but the, the the
sleep issue is humongous and it's the one that we can do It's
kind of messed up, but it's actually one of the easiest of
all the things that we can do for optimization, but it's also
the hardest because it means we can't be doing fun stuff.
(20:23):
We have to sleep. We have to like go to bed early.
We have to like prioritize and even and though I continually
harp on this and I know that if I get one more hour sleep, I
think I'll perform better and I can know when I my numbers go
from, you know, I'm like A7. I'm a 6A low 6 is I'm really
it's AI can get through one or two days, but I really, I really
(20:44):
need to be a 7. And if I get 8, I'm like killing
it, right? But 8 might be too much if I'm
hyped up before surgery. So I'm more like A7.
See, I know my numbers. So the, the fact is, like when
I'm at a, if I hit 5, three daysin a row, that's a disaster.
And so if you're an athlete, it's the same way, but you don't
know it until you're tracking it, right?
Like I used to never know it until I had my Apple Watch.
(21:04):
And now I kind of know. And I actually, and you're
right, but there is definitely amental component.
Like am I looking and saying, OhGod, it says 55 hours and 30
minutes? Like that's not good, right?
And I don't know how well they work because I feel like
sometimes I get less sleep than it actually says I did and
things like that. But I, I definitely know that it
gets me. I think it alerts you more to it
and it makes you more aware and it prioritizes something that's
(21:24):
a very simple fix. And so it makes perfect sense to
me why sleep quality and duration is so important.
And I, I hate to say it, but my,the patients ask me all the
time, like, what else can I do? And like, this should be brought
up right? Like you can sleep more during
your recovery and, and you got to find ways to do that.
You got to be active. You got to, you know, shut down
(21:45):
the electronics an hour before you got to get clear the mind.
I mean, it's nothing like the worst possible thing I've ever,
I ever do in the last few weeks was check my e-mail 2 minutes
before I went to bed and found an e-mail that made me
frustrated for some reason or another.
I mean, it had to happen to me last week.
It was the stupidest thing ever.And so you can't do that stuff
to yourself. You really have to stay.
You have to really focus on justclear your mind.
(22:07):
It's hard, you know, it's, it's amazing.
Like you, you've heard Mark Wahlberg talk about I go to bed
at 8:00 AM and I wake up at at, you know, I'm sorry, 8:00 PM,
wake up at 4:00 AM and I go workout in the train and go, there's
that eat and go back and train and work out and sleep.
And that when you go on the David Goggins of the world and
so many other high level athletes and performers, I'm
(22:30):
envious that they're able to be so dedicated and get to bed and
get X amount of sleep. Now, I don't know if they're
lying. I don't know if it's just the
social media, you know, where they're saying they're doing XY
and Z and you know, maybe most of the time they are and they're
not. But it's a hard thing.
Like you, as you preface it, it's easy, it's simple, but it's
(22:51):
not so. I think actually we should try
to find a sleep expert. This is going to be really good.
I have it right now. Sleep and longevity.
We're we're ready to go. We're definitely ready to go.
So the sleep, so one more thing on the sleep.
So another thing is they showed professional athletes and some
of the best athletes in the world like sleep a ton.
Ronaldo, he does, they said he does 14 hours a day.
(23:12):
Now again, I don't know how that's possible.
Is he the dad? I don't know.
We. Need to show the.
We need to show the sleep? There's this, there's a sleep
bar graph. I know we're, I know we're going
to, I know we're going off topic, but there's a sleep bar
graph which we need to show the the viewers at some point.
And it shows a bell curve. And there are, there is majority
of people are in the 7:00 to 8:00.
(23:33):
There are people in the 9 to 10 and 11 hours.
I know my best friend is actually in a 10 hour person,
which is unusual. He gets crazy.
Yes, I know and he'd be laughingif you heard me talking about
this, but he's a solid 9 to 10. Every time we were college
roommates, it was 9 to 10 hours solid.
And it I there is people on the double curve, but there are also
people which have these special abilities that can do 4 to 5.
(23:56):
And so this will be a great topic to come up with later
because I kind of love this idea.
I love thinking about this because I always wish I was a
four to five, but unfortunately the four to five also lives
shorter. So there is a the whole nother
discussion topic. My my wife has a an incredible
skill set that she can take a nap.
We could stay up for an hour andthen it'll be like bedtime and
(24:17):
she can go back to bed and not have any issues.
I take a nap, I'm up to 2:00 in the morning.
I don't know how she does it. It's a superpower.
It's. Amazing.
It's a superpower. It's your wife, and you just
shouldn't ask questions. That's the problem.
The problem is that you're even thinking about you.
I'm making sure she's not looking at me.
I think she follows us. We might be screwed right here.
(24:37):
We're going to have to mute thisout.
That's all right. OK, I will.
I'm going to edit this out. All right, let's talk about
helmet sensors. We've talked about that.
The helmets, we talked about theGuardian.
There's so many, so much that's kind of going toward the helmet,
toward the sensors. Let's just kind of get into a
little bit more about that and the benefits of the helmet
(24:58):
sensors and how teams are utilizing them.
I just kind of, I put this together and said the NFL had a
pilot program using helmet sensors to measure impact, but
this was suspended due to concerns over data accuracy.
And we're going to get into thatreal quick and reliability.
According to Science and ESPN, while the specific program was
halted, the league continues to research and invest in advanced
(25:20):
concussion assessment tools, including eye tracking
technology and impact sensing mouth guards.
Doctor Garcia, when it comes to accuracy and reliability, that's
one thing. And then going into the other
assessment tools, what are your thoughts on that?
I don't mean to smile, but I'm smiling because this happened to
(25:40):
us on our teams. So we had the tracking sensors,
the impact sensors and one time my trainer looks at me and she
goes check this out and like theplayer was just running around.
It just showed they had a massive impact.
So there there is some inaccuracy in the sense that it
might over call things or sometimes it doesn't doesn't
register it. Now again, that was 3 year old
(26:01):
tech not in the NFL And so was it the top of the line?
I don't know. The challenge you have obviously
is they're getting hit. They have these like chips in
them and registering. And you also got to be really
careful, right? Because the last thing you want
to do is pull out your player during a playoff game because it
says they got hit really hard and they have no symptoms.
And then you got to do a full assessment.
So this is really complicated. And the other thing is like,
(26:24):
what do you do with that data, right?
Like if you if you see it and they get hit, but you know it's
not accurate, but now you got itdocumented as a team position
that this player just had a massive hit.
You kind of have to pull them out for medical legal reasons.
So it's really tricky. And the NFL, obviously there's a
lot of money and there's both two sides of the story, right?
There's the owners and the players association.
(26:45):
And so did the, did the players want them tracking them?
The players don't want to get pulled out because all of a
sudden now they, they took, theytook 60 snaps instead of 170 or
80 snaps. And maybe they dropped their
contract, right? And they're going to be like,
oh, well, you keep getting hits on the, on the thing.
So there's the this is a business, this is a, this is a a
big, a lot of money involved with this and unfortunately you
(27:05):
want to protect the players. But the same point, there may be
situations where if you don't want to have mismanagement of
the system or inaccuracies. So until it's perfect, it's
going to be really challenging and it's going to be a lot of
work. We know this is like always on
the forefront of them because concussions.
We've talked about this at nauseam, especially with the
recent two episode we had and other issue, other episodes
(27:26):
we've had regarding this, like this is this is their hot dog.
If they could choose one thing to figure out and be done with,
it'd be concussions. Yeah, I, I agree over anything
else, right. So and that whatever, I'm not
going to get into it because we've we've gotten into this
discussion and you know, so anyway, I'm going to move on
because we're already Yip yapping for almost 28 minutes.
(27:47):
So let's kind of show this here.The trends last year, apparently
everything kind of went down a little bit 17% overall, less
concussions, kickoff concussion 43% with the new rule.
So it's some of those I'll just quick recap you no longer
allowed to run down the field. You're no no longer able to load
(28:08):
up extra players on either side of the ball has to be the same
amount of players you're kickingoff into a specific area and
then no one's starting to run until the ball is caught or
lands in that area. So the the collisions are less,
you don't have someone running down 3040 yards to field before
they smash into somebody. So that's makes sense that the
(28:31):
concussion rules have led to less concussions.
A drop of 43% kick off leg strains.
It's really kind of interesting.48% lower extremity strains in
general. I don't know what to make of
that with this. What does that mean lower
extremity strains? Is that just kind of fall under?
I think that's like hamstring quad Achilles.
(28:54):
And it makes sense, right? Because I'm assuming that's not
just the the kicker, but like you're going full like those
guys go so much faster than the average player because like most
time, like you're not getting a breakout, right?
Like maybe the wide receivers are running for a route, but
generally unless there's an explosive play, they're not very
far distances. But the kickoffs, you're just
(29:16):
going as fast as you can. And a lot of those players
aren't playing the rest of the game right, so they're not
warmed up. And then they're like, let's
just go as fast as we can to make my mark.
I got to get the tackle so they'll Take Me Out of special
teams to put me in the regular game. 100% and that and that is
coached right. You know, you've, you work with
high school football teams. I've worked with high school
football teams. That is something that we used
(29:36):
to say you run down there and ifyou're, if you're the first one,
be the first one down there running through the end zone.
Even if you see unfair, you know, catch a ball, they're
running through the end zone. So that kind of piggybacks
they're flying as fast as they can and having these collisions.
We talk about cost not only in this show, but on on previous
shows, the cost of injuries, right?
(29:59):
We we mentioned it when we were talking about basketball and now
we're talking about football. It's just some of the numbers
there Bucks 23 million last year, 21 million for the
Steelers. And this is not even true
numbers to me. I think that.
Some of these numbers are true. Yeah, they're, they're not, or
that's just a portion of some ofthose numbers, not including the
(30:21):
ones that got hurt before the season started that went right
to the IR, you know, things likethat.
So, but it it becomes interesting as far as a topic of
just saying injuries cost money and NFL and every professional
team are going to do everything possible to reduce injuries,
(30:41):
whether it's tech, whether it's sleep, whatever it is, they're
going to keep investing in that money.
Well, and I had to say this, butno matter how expensive
everything is, it's not nearly as expensive as the player
getting hurt. So there is there I know the
cost of a lot of these things and they are not even close to a
20 million. They can't they won't know what
(31:04):
team's going to pay that money. But the fact is you have
something that's, you know, we talked about products on here.
There's sometimes 200, five, 100,000.
That's a lot of money for the average person.
But for an NFL player that's making 20 to $30 million a year,
that's around. I mean, we talked about what,
before 50? 5 million a year?
What if he's out for the year $55 million investment?
(31:25):
Or what about we talked about this before with like LeBron
spends $1,000,000 a year on his thing.
That's a, that's like a, that's a rounding error for him.
That's nothing. But you know how much time much
he can get for that A lot because $1,000,000 is still a
lot of money. And so as a result, these guys
will do whatever it takes. And there's no number we we
could we can go at nauseam different players.
You might not probably don't have time to go through
everything. But the the idea behind this is
like, if you find anything that reduces injuries, it's game
(31:48):
changer. That's why the guardian helmets
blew up, right? He's like reduce the concussions
for practices, increase it for certain players.
Like that's a big freaking deal.I mean, concussions are a
nightmare. Yeah, yeah.
And you know, and we've seen it.We'll talk about a couple
players and then we'll just kindof wrap it up.
Obviously our focus was on the tech and you know, the some of
(32:09):
the excitement about the NFL, but key players to kind of look
at Matthew Stafford, 37 years old, low back disc issues.
He's had back issues in the past.
He's played her tough guy throughout his career, long
career concerned because once again, lot of money starting
(32:29):
quarterback for the Rams. You know, if he stays healthy,
they have a team that can be a playoff team.
When I say low back disc issues,what is your red flag?
I mean, red flag is the idea behind like what's that?
Not only is the disc out, but isthere more damage to the actual
the two spaces and it becoming alittle bit of arthritis in that
(32:50):
area? And he has a disc, he's getting
injections, probably getting PR PS doing traction.
He's doing all sorts of fancy things under the sun, but he's
not going to get a surgery and right.
So he's got nerve issues. You know, lower back pain from
disc can happen. That's really common and the
nerve issues are the preaker problem, right, because if he
starts getting nerve weakness, he herniates more like those are
bigger issues. And we know we've had a couple
(33:11):
other high level players, the basketball realm just recurrent
right and those things are nasty.
I mean this I've had this before.
It's horrible. And so the idea is like you
don't you really don't want to do it.
You don't want to have, if you can and obviously of all the
injuries like you get a, you have an injured arm or
something, you can still throw, you get a little bit of a leg
injury. You can still push through it,
but lower back like everything'sinvolved with that.
(33:32):
So anyhow, it's it's not it's not a great thing, but to get
these tend to be more chronic and I bet you'll play through
it. He'll, you know, get an
epidural, make it four or five games, throw one more epidural
in there. They'll get him through the
season with this most likely. You've had back issues, you've
had back pain. How does a 275 LB man running at
you and then hitting you and laying on top of you?
(33:53):
How does that? How does your how does your back
feel when I say that? Well, if you're paying me $55
million, I might change my response.
But if I had to just take that hit and not get anything for it,
I think the answer is that I'd be very pretty terrified.
Oh, man, Tyree Kill one of the most explosive wide receivers in
the NFL. He's coming back from an oblique
(34:16):
injury, right? This core injury for an
explosive wide receiver, not a big frame of player.
I'm not sure if that matters, whether the the size of the
player, but what are some of theconcerns with with this type of
injury? Well, these injuries suck.
Like that's all I got to say. I mean, so the, the answer is
that like the, the problem with the obliques that people don't
(34:37):
realize is like all your power comes from your core, right?
Like they're like use your core,use your core.
So these oblique injuries, theserib injuries, the intercostal
injuries, they are really, really tough.
They're painful. There's really nothing you could
do. I can tell you this because I
just recovered from one of these.
I was foiling and I fell at 20 miles an hour and I had a bad
intercostal and I thought it wastotally fine, right?
I could push through it. And after the week of trying to
(34:59):
push through it, it just got worse and worse and worse.
You couldn't do core exercises. You can't do anything.
You can't run, you can't lift even though every other part of
your body feels good. It's literally just hurts to do
anything. So these, this is a, this is
going to be a challenge for him.He's, you know, he relies on
speed, right? That explosive speed that he
has. The other challenges that just
they're usually not fixed and you just sit there and wait for
(35:21):
them. Now again, the challenge is
which type of core injury? There's lots of core muscles.
So if it's something he can get through, maybe he'll push
through it. I mean, if he doesn't want to
wait for it to reinjure, it doesn't heal.
It could happen continually and then it could full tear.
Now again, it depends, right? There's there's always like 3
levels of most of these. There's like the partial tear,
(35:42):
there's or the the like small tiny tear.
There's a full, near full tear and then full, full tear.
Full tear is usually surgery. Again, depends on this area,
probably has a one or two, probably more like A2 if they're
bringing it up. But I mean they'll generally
these do end up returning to stuff.
So I think it's just going to bea little bit of challenge.
This player is not going to playthis season.
(36:05):
Rashawn Slater, he signed a massive contract with the with
the Chargers trying to protect their quarterback.
As we talk about injuries for quarterbacks, the Patella tendon
rupture, even though he's not going to play, it's something
that's kind of right up your alley.
So I wanted to bring it up. You know, what does that entail,
especially for a man that size? He's going to miss the entire
(36:27):
season. You know that Patella tendon
rupture. How does that affect him going
forward? I mean, this used to be the
player killer, right? I mean, with this before some
newer techniques, this was a 50%return to sport, so one of the
lowest in the NFL. I've talked about this before on
previous, I think radio shows. Then I think we had it on here a
while ago. But this is, this is not a good
(36:48):
one. The good news is that we've got
some new stuff. I mean, they'll do standard
repair. We've got videos even on the
website of how we do this kind of enhanced repairs that, you
know, they now we add, now we add internal braces.
If you've done correctly, it's, it's a little bit trickier to
set the internal brace of this because it's so much flexion.
So you don't want to obviously put an internal brace, it
doesn't move. But there are there are lots of
tricks that these docs can do with some newer implants and
(37:10):
techniques. And we have definitely seen a
higher return to sport over the last few years with this injury.
So I wish him well. But this is a solid 7-8 months.
I saw Christian McCaffrey I'm kind of jumping around to have a
long list of injuries, but you know, for time I'm going to jump
around and kind of key on some of the the top players.
(37:31):
Christian McCaffrey, 49ers running back, All Pro Stud.
Coming off the season that he sustained an Achilles injury.
We're going to talk about some of the recovery a little bit
later on. What are some of the concerns?
He's had quite a few injuries, even though his production has
been high. He's had a lot of injuries
throughout his career. But some of the concerns with
(37:52):
that Achilles injury besides, you know what we've normally
talked about. I mean, the challenge with him
is it's, it's not a full rupture, right?
So it's just like dealing with the inflammation, dealing with
the inflammation, bilateral tendonitis is not ideal, you
know, and this is also a guy, like you said, he's very
productive, but he's he continues getting injured.
I mean, it took him all people couldn't figure out what was
(38:13):
going on with him for weeks, right?
He just wasn't back, right? That's never good.
Like The thing is, if they're not publicizing what he has,
they might not know how to fix it.
What? What does that mean?
Bilateral Achilles tendonitis? It just for the people that
don't really understand what. That means, I'll be honest,
it's. Clear, right?
But what does that? Mean, I mean, Achilles
(38:33):
tendonitis is basically like it continues to hurt.
The idea of that tendonitis means that there's inflammation
in the tendon. So he's just got every time he's
running and there's probably a pain in the back of his ankle.
The challenge is right, like, isthis tendonitis going to lead to
rupture? Well, bilateral rupture is
pretty unusual. Achilles can happen.
Kitchen Mccaffrey's not really the type of guy that would get
(38:54):
it, but he could get it right. You know what I mean?
Like usually it's bigger guys like the the defensive ends and
you know, the linebackers. He's a little bit built a little
bit differently from that. But it can always happen to any
of these high level sprinting players.
But I mean, that guy has tried everything.
You know, I think he went to Germany for some special type of
cell injections. He's gone.
(39:15):
He's doing. Gyro stem.
You know that doing a button here you go not to start any,
any, any rumors here, but the 49ers traded for Washington
Commanders starting running backBrian Robinson right before the
start of the season. So going back to what did the
49ers know? Even though Mccaffrey's saying I
(39:36):
look good, I feel good, I sound good, you know, everything is in
order. But the 49ers go, yeah, we're
going to trade for another running back yet, you know,
besides what they have. So, you know, if you're in the
room, what's the, what's the thought process there?
Thought process is you need an insurance policy.
I mean, he could do everything he wants.
But the problem you have is a lot of this is talk like we've
talked about before, like we talk about all this tech, but
(39:58):
does it really work right? Is it really getting you that
much better? Like, yes, but like do you, I
mean, McCaffrey would be good probably without any of this
stuff, right? Like he he was, he's naturally
talented, right? And he's he's the same thing we
talked about with some of these other players, right?
Even when they're a little bit injured, they're still better
than most. So the, the challenge is, are
(40:19):
you going to be able to pick up and right?
And he, he knows he's now more on the chopping block than
before, right? He's been out so much.
Is it worth paying and is it worth doing all his things?
And hate to say it, he's kind ofgetting old for running back.
Yeah, he's a. Tremendous lifespan of running
back serves challenge. Yeah, I mean, he's exciting.
He's great to watch. You know, it's just injuries,
(40:40):
right? I want to touch on two more
players and then we'll get readyto wrap it up.
Jonathan Brooks from the Panthers ACL.
The reason I bring it up becausethere's biologics, there's some
graphs shifting. Is this a Lavender style kind of
surgery that Jonathan Brooks mayhave gone through?
(41:01):
Is is it our buddy Chad Lavender?
Is he involved with something like this?
I wouldn't be surprised with this one.
The challenge here is that the biologic ACL requires a quad, so
it's a different type of graft. The issue you have is that a
lot, even though the quad ACL isa very popular graph, I do a lot
(41:21):
of it's actually majority of my Acls, which is the similar thing
that what Lavender was saying, the challenges that Patella
tendon, which is what most of the professional athletes get.
Like even Elatros, who's amazingsurgeon, he if he, he's, he
loved, he likes the quad idea, but he's kind of like in the in
the NFL, he's like, I'm not NFL player.
I'm not going to mess with it, right?
I'm going to do the Patella tendon.
(41:43):
That's what we've been doing foryears.
That's the that's the option. And so, but we all know that
like nowadays with this, with the media and agents hearing
more stuff like something like the Lavender ACL would get
picked up on and potentially could he return a bit faster?
Yes. But we also heard from Lavender
and he wanted to emphasize this.This is not like four months,
(42:04):
this is 6 months. So it depends on when he has the
ACL tear is even worth it, right?
You know what I mean? Or it's just like they're going
to. The thing is, to me, I tell
people there's no downside If you want to return in the same
window, but you want to have thebiologics to hopefully help
enhance the bone to bone, the healing of the tendon, there's
no downside. But the cost, right?
For in the NFL, they don't care because it's a small cost.
(42:26):
But for my, I mean, a patient this day that asked about the
fertilized ACL, they wanted to bio ACL and I said, here are the
risks. Here's the benefits from the
podcast. Here's from understanding my
research, you know, and they andthey opted and that says
actually to not do it. But sometimes they play, you
know, I have someone, I have onea couple weeks that wants to do
this. They want everything under the
sun to get back to the best possible.
Yeah, that that'll be interesting to see how he
(42:48):
recovers and and get a little bit more information.
Last but not least, really, he was in the running for defensive
player of the NFL last year. The heart and soul of the
Detroit Lions. I think if he would have been
healthy, I think they could havegone to the Super Bowl.
I think they potentially could have beaten the Eagles and
(43:08):
advanced Aiden Hutchinson for the Detroit Lions went to
University of Michigan. Tibula, fibula fracture,
surgical nail fixation, Advancedbone stem.
What the hell does all of that mean?
So you you said it well, which is good.
(43:28):
So basically we've had this before some of the players where
they snap the mid shaft. This is actually what Alex Smith
had, but his was open much worse.
So when you break the middle of the the bone in the tibia, it
can just be a break, which is bad.
It can be a break with a hole, it can break with a bigger hole.
And the bigger the hole, the increased risk of infection and
wound complications, which is what Alex Smith had.
(43:51):
But a clean break with maybe a poke hole or nothing.
Usually what they do is they canput a rod down there.
The nice thing about the rod is that it's instantaneously
stabilized and it's inside the knee.
So the incisions are really small, right?
You go from a certain angle, youusually put it from the top down
in someone's leg and it can staythere permanently from the
kneecap, correct? There's two ways to do it, but
(44:12):
usually from the kneecap areas, the way you do it and then.
Permanently. Or is it something that's an
option to take out? Because I've heard different
variations. Go ahead.
So generally you just take out the screws that hold it in.
Imagine you got to like, you know, you got the big pipe in
there and you got to pin it right to keep it in there.
So a lot of people get the screws out because taking the
pipe out is a nightmare. You can do it, but you can
(44:35):
imagine it's very hard once it grows in to try to pull that
thing out. So that's actually right.
And they they're healing around it as well.
Like we have one guy in our office, our PA that loves to
take him out. So it takes him like 30 minutes
of just hammering to get this thing out and we literally
haven't come to every case. He gets so excited to help out.
But anyhow, so the the Long story short is like, generally
(44:55):
we leave the metal in there and then the advanced stem.
I mean, the idea here is like, can we make someone heal faster,
right? Like that's the whole point of
the biologics. Can we can and again, the stem
for our general patient be really hard to get, right?
Like I can't get these. I can't get these approved half
the time for insurance unless they have a really, really bad
issue. But obviously, you know, no big
deal, just throw some money at it and get it to heal.
(45:17):
The bone simulators do help. And so the idea is like
anybody's willing to do, if it was me and I had to pay out of
pocket to so I could heal and walk faster and run faster two
months later, earlier, I'd definitely do it.
Wow, OK, I'm grossed out a little bit on that one.
Before we wrap up, are you? Are you?
(45:38):
I think you want some trivia, right?
You want a little trivia, littleNFL trivia to kick off the
season? Everybody loves this part.
I think I know you love it. This is your favorite part.
This is better than surgery right now.
I love it. I love it.
OK, listen, Week 8, if nobody gets hurt, this is which is
we're talking about injury. Michael Pennix from the formerly
(46:00):
from the University of Washington for Atlanta Falcons
is going to match up with Tua Taco Viola.
It'll be the first time since 2000, I believe 12 since 2:00.
left-handed quarterbacks have started against you, against
each other, which is really, really interesting.
Can you name the last? There's only been 2 Super Bowl
(46:24):
winners, Super Bowl quarterbacks.
Can you name either one of them that have won a Super Bowl?
The last left-handed quarterbackto win a Super Bowl?
One of two. I like even I had him trying to
think about them playing, but then half the time you see him,
they're like you're seeing him from the other directions, so
you don't even know. I don't know.
(46:44):
We'll say Kurt Warner. He's not left-handed.
I have no idea. This is absolutely impossible
trivia. All right, so the hard one is
Ken Stabler. Jake the Snake finally got into
the Hall of Fame postmortem. And Steve Young.
Steve Young. I.
(47:06):
Last left-handed quarterback? Interesting.
There's only been 11 left-handedquarterbacks to come into the
NFL since Michael Vick got drafted back in 2001.
That's crazy. Well, it's less common.
I mean, I'm left-handed. It's 10%.
Why? Why do you think that?
Real quick before we wrap it up,why do you think that we're not
seeing left-handed quarterbacks in the NFL?
(47:30):
Well, First off, there's not an advantage.
So if you're not an advantage like in baseball, there's an
advantage, right? Like in.
You're on to something. I that's my thought.
I think what you're doing is you're getting left-handed hard
throwers and you're getting themto commit to baseball, which.
Is more lucrative. It's much more lucrative.
(47:51):
That's my. So yeah, I mean, I agree with
you. That's my guess.
What we're not seeing left-handed quarterbacks, but
they go and wait. If you're left-handed and you
throw 98, don't go throw a football.
Go throw a baseball and we'll make you filthy rich and a 275
LB man is not going to land on. Well, I also would say that you
don't have to be as good and left-handed.
(48:12):
Does that make sense? So like you're not even like
they're not even getting that level.
Like if they're that good, they're getting recruited hard
from the baseball, but like they're just baseball.
Baseball's pulling anybody that's a decent thrower that's
left-handed because they're so they're so much less common,
right? Like if you have, if 10% of the
population is left-handed, ideally you have the same amount
of throwers that are right. You, you have the same, probably
(48:33):
less, you have only 10% that throw as hard as right handers.
That's a small pool and then they're throwing them so much
money on them because they're souncommon.
But that's why you see so many more left handers in MLB.
But it's actually not even closeto equal.
All right, let's say goodbye. We went over our time because
that's what happens. Thanks for listening to
sports.talkcheckusoutsports.talk.com.We have transcripts, we have
(48:57):
shows. Check out our polls.
We are getting requests for topics and new shows.
Thank you for everyone that's reached out to us.
We've had plenty of people reached out and e-mail us.
We're very thankful for our guests.
So I don't know what else to say.
Doctor Garcia, you want to wrap it up?
(49:18):
Yeah. So thanks again for all
listeners and for the, we had a lot of guest requests this
summer, so hopefully you have tosee some of those show up.
And again, if you're interested in being a guest in the show,
let us know. Obviously it's important to us
that, you know, we get a lot of quests that may not fit the
showbook. We're really going to try to
stick with this sort of orthopedic sports kind of
innovation topic. But you know, it doesn't hurt.
(49:40):
Reach out and we'll we'll vet itand see if it works for us.
So thank you. We really appreciate everybody.
Let's go Big Blue, baby.
Welcome to Sports Doc Talk. I'm Will Sanchez, along with our
orthopedic surgeon in sports medicine, specialist Doctor
Grant Garcia. He is not only a pretty face, he
is not someone that you're just going to listen to and watch on
social media, but he is one of the top doctors out there.
So check out his credentials. Doctor Garcia, how are you?
(00:39):
I'm fairly certain that that intro changes every single time.
I have no idea where it's going,so I just have to sit there and
smile. I'm good.
Yeah, I know it's a it's a scorching day in Seattle, but
super nice. So we're we're lucky we're
soaking up the last few weeks ofsummer so. 100% And as the title
showed, we're going to talk a little bit about the 2025
(01:00):
kickoff. We're going to get into some key
injuries for some of the playersand and we're just going to have
some fun banter because this is what we do is football season.
I'm super excited about the season because as some of you
know, we are miserable New York Giants fans and once a while
long time ago, we were very happy with our team celebrating
(01:21):
Super Bowl championships at the defeating the New England
Patriots. But we've been suffering.
A long time ago. And I, I don't know about you,
it, it hurt a little bit. I felt good for him, but it hurt
a little bit to see Saquon win the championship more because he
was with the Eagles and anyone else, so I'm still trying to get
over the season. What are your expectations for
(01:42):
the Giants before we kick off this show?
I, I mean, the problem is that this they're so hyped right now.
They're like what they're, they're so hyped.
This is like one of the best I've ever seen the introductions
for the team. I think the challenge will be
like, we'll see what happens in those first few games.
The NFC East is tough. They have three really good
(02:02):
teams they play against now, andthere's no schmuck quarterbacks
or anything. I mean, it's just it's legit.
Every team is legitimate. Yeah, they ranked the New York
Giants as the hardest schedule for this upcoming season out of
all 32 teams. That's what they need for so and
so poorly last, yeah. Exactly.
You had the worst record where here's the hardest schedule, go
(02:23):
off and be somebody. They've got the Chiefs, they've
got the Lions, Minnesota, the NFC East, the AFC West.
It is going to be a gauntlet. And you know, if I have a have
trouble sitting there on Sunday trying to recover from the pain
and misery, hopefully not from the Giants.
This is not the same, but it's aweird Segway.
(02:46):
Let's shout out to the recovery shop.
Can they help me recover on a bad Sunday?
They might be able to they've got all sorts of things.
So you know, the the nice thing is that this is again, I even
today I had patients asking about this.
So you know, for surgeons, it's nice to offer to your patients.
They can use this for things extra they want, right?
They want to have a nice machine.
(03:06):
They want to do Rebliss. They want to have other
different innovative tools to get them back.
We're starting potentially working on more nutrition
supplementation and other thingsas well.
So it's all part of this sort ofpackage deal you can have for
your recovery. And the patients have been
elated with the service and I have been as well as a as a
surgeon to give it to my patients and hear about it.
(03:26):
So it's just another thing that makes that whole post operative
recovery process good. So thanks again for our
sponsors. And shout out to Mike B at the
recovery shop. So please reach out to Mike B.
He can help everyone out there. So we, we can't thank Mike and
the entire team enough. Listen, 2025 is going to be real
interesting. Before we get into some of these
(03:48):
injuries, we, you know, we're going to have a little bit of
fun. We're going to talk a little bit
of tech. We'll talk about some injuries.
This is not a fantasy football show.
But if you're a fantasy footballfan and some of the people that
we talked about help you make a decision whether you're going to
grab them in the first round or maybe you hold up to the second.
Hey, listen, we're we're we, we can help you in many different
ways. But looking at the 2025, we have
(04:10):
some NFL fun facts. The international games.
We know that football is global is king of sports, at least here
in in the United States of America.
Soccer rules the world globally,but for for us here it is.
Football League record 7 games. Oh, look at this.
What's that that game up there? Chiefs versus Chargers, where
(04:32):
they're playing at Doctor Garcia.
Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo, what?
What? What are your thoughts on that
one? That's pretty cool.
That's gonna be awesome. That's like, yeah, that's a big
deal. That's a long flight, though.
That is a long flight, but that'll be really interesting.
That's, I mean, Sao Paulo's off to the hit.
I mean, they do the F1 in November, so they've been really
(04:54):
big and they had a game there orthen they have a game there last
year or two years ago. I thought the Chiefs, I thought
the Eagles played at some point,if I remember correctly.
Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, I'm not.
I'm not sure. If not I would be lying.
But the fact that they're getting them, that you can't
have enough good, good games at Dublin.
Obviously we'll see a lot of college football games.
They've been going out there. I know Notre Dame is a big fan
(05:16):
of going out there. Lots of Guinness.
We have a good time. Madrid.
I love Madrid, I love Spain, Dolphins and the Commanders.
I'm hoping that the Dolphins winknockout the Commanders because
like we said, we're Giants fans and we could.
Anytime we can get a loss for one of those NFC East teams, we
appreciate it. London three times, Berlin once.
(05:37):
Real quick, this is not the topic of the show, but concerns
with doctors, teen doctors. When you're traveling so much,
you're traveling so far, making sure the recovery.
What are some of the things, or at least highlight one specific
thing, that a team doctor will make sure that his their players
are doing? I mean, as a team physician,
(05:58):
your biggest concern is not really the injuries, but rather
sort of the sleep performance. We've talked about this.
We should probably get someone who manages sleep and athletes
because I think that would be a really good thing.
I know we have some other episodes coming up that talk
about the mental aspects, but the sleep is no joke.
I mean, that is one of the hardest things for these
athletes to deal with is how youchange the sleep time zones.
(06:20):
I mean, I do a lot of consultingthings and I'm flying 24 hours
down to Florida and back and, and that isn't a joke.
And again, I'm not having to perform mentally, maybe a little
bit physically, but not constantly doing that.
I mean, the time zone is a big deal.
I mean, this is they're probablygoing to leave.
I think they leave a little bit earlier, right, If it's a
probably a few extra days, but generally they make them come
(06:41):
right back on that next flight out for the following thing.
So it's hard. I mean, the good news is they're
all younger and healthier than we are, so they can handle it a
bit better. But that that is a that's a
topic in of itself is the the challenges of sleep.
We brought it up once before. I think there are a couple times
in our show, but that is a big deal.
Yeah, I mean, we think it's important to just kind of
(07:03):
highlights, but that's part of the recovery and that, you know,
that's part of everything that these players can are concerned
about or could possibly lead to injuries.
Quarterback carousel, 12 new starters.
Who knows, it might be more. We just know that that's kind of
the way here in Seattle. Sam Darnold, goals from
Minnesota Vikings, now the starting quarterback for the for
(07:24):
the Seahawks. The Raiders get, you know, those
old Seahawks quarterback, he's there.
And our old friend Daniel Jones,he's going to be the starter for
the Indianapolis Colts. So lots of moving and shaking.
I mean, Aaron Rodgers with the Steelers, you name it.
Lots of storylines. This is just the classic NFL
(07:46):
It's just a shake around the box, grab the quarterback and
hope that there's a there's a chance he's better than the last
time we got them. You know I.
I we'll see. I mean, we, it worked with Sam
Darnold, but you know, it's, it's unfortunately the roulette
doesn't always work in everybody's favors.
So hopefully the fresh start forthe Giants is the one that wins
out. Yep, and we will have Russell
Wilson. We'll see how long he stays
(08:07):
there before they'll start calling for the dart man Jason
Dart. So anyway, let's talk about
this. We want to talk about some of
the NFL tech and this was reallyfascinating because the NFL
always, you know, stand ahead oftechnology.
They're using different tech fortheir players, for their
(08:30):
organizations. I think it was a year ago,
something like that. I was making fun of the urinals.
That's a whole other conversation if anybody want to
goes. Back My favorite NFL tech.
That is my favorite. Monitoring hydration there with
the urinals, but just to kick itoff, the Catapult GPS with speed
load and fatigue. Once you talk about this and how
(08:52):
that's beneficial to some of these teams as they're
partnering with Catapult for themonitoring.
I mean, the one thing you alwaysknow is, like, all these teams
that go after the NFL first, right?
These are these companies, right, 'cause if they can get
them on board, they're willing to spend the money for their
players to give them a little bit of an edge.
And everyone's looking for that.I mean, you go into these team
(09:12):
locker rooms and they've got tech you've never seen before.
They're like, oh, this is a startup, this company's a
startup, and we're trying to getthis.
So the idea here is obviously you're using this GPS wearable
technology and then you're really going to get a lot more
detailed informations like again, like how fast you doing,
what kind of load are you putting on the body?
And then by that, there's some calculations that can do
(09:34):
algorithms to determine fatigue.And I think the key here is we
always say like as a, as a physician on the team, you want
to know when the players to fatigue.
It's very hard to figure that out.
And so if we can find an algorithm or proprietary
information that'll tell us, hey, this player is like pretty
close to getting injured or like, you know, you know what I
mean? Like you've seen in the NFL,
(09:55):
you've seen in little, you've seen in all levels of football,
the players like you're like, you're out, you know, and the
coach is yelling them to come out and they're like, screw you,
screw you. I'm staying in, right?
Like, so can we? It's the same thing with the
concussions, right? They have the helmets, not as
much in the NFL, but our high school team, she's got we, our
trainer has a helmet monitor, right?
When they get hit really hard, we'll know before the player
will know. And so the idea is that like,
(10:17):
can we track all these things inreal time?
Because as much as they're players, they're also, they're
owned by the, by the NFL teams and there's a lot of money on
Stan if they get hurt, which will show about how much the
injuries cost. It is a massive amount of money.
So can we find a way to reduce injuries?
And yeah, he says, listen, this person needs this, this guy
needs 2 downs, right? He's, we use them on 1st, let's
(10:39):
save them for 3rd or 4th or on the 4th down, we're going
forward or something. So it, it's really important all
that stuff. I think that other the other
tech you want to talk about, that next one's going to be
really interesting because that is something that's more
universal I think with a lot of people.
Yeah. And right before I get to that,
and I know that you're on the orthopedic side.
So you're you're you're kind of getting them, you know, after
(10:59):
the injury has been, it has happened.
But is there anything that you're doing, or at least the
people that you're working with,whether it's a watch or whoop or
anything like that, that you're kind of incorporating, or at
least the partners that you haveare incorporating for the
regular, you know, the regular Joes that are trying to recover?
(11:20):
I think, I think the answer is we're always looking for
something. But the problem you have is the
market's really saturated, right?
The, the challenge here is like if I go and sell a watch, I'm
competing with Apple, right? Like there was an article I read
about one guy that had a fitnessapp and he was basically
bankrupt until LeBron James happened to be the one of 200
(11:40):
people that bought the watch. And it was like his last dollar.
And LeBron James like showed it off in a commercial by accident.
And he went from that to like $100 million in like a couple
weeks by accident because just happened to be wearing his
device. So, and I've worked and I've
been part of discussions with, you know, is it as a on beam
social media presence and being on the podcasting, I get emails
(12:04):
all the time for new tech saying, Hey, you want to look at
my new product this, that and that.
And, you know, it's, it's reallycommon.
So unfortunately there is a lot of stuff that we do.
So it's always hard to tell and to get really involved in one
particular thing. And I, I think that that I think
that that's where more of the physical therapy side of things
in people coming injuries, but also just really about stuff
like this, right? Can we talk online and say, Hey,
(12:25):
listen, you really need to be using your watch like your heart
rates dropped. Like we don't have enough good
stuff out there yet. It's all really expensive and it
requires, you know, subscriptionbased and it also requires
someone the algorithm to do it in like what they really need to
do is like partner with a place like Apple or or Fitbit or
things like that. And you basically wear it on
your wrist and it says you're getting fatigued like you were
(12:47):
at you were at a 64% chance of injury.
You know, like from the minorityreport type of like algorithms
like AI, right? Can we predict regular people
getting injured like you're skiing and like you're just out
of control. Like your legs are, your legs
are gassed, like you're not firing everything In Sync.
But again, it's there's so many different muscles they have to
monitor, but can you think aboutdifferent things?
(13:07):
So like, you know, maybe we're coming up with an idea.
Maybe we just let on some information that we shouldn't
have, but who knows? So anyhow.
Yeah, I, I love the example thatyou just gave because I remember
one time I went back up snowboarding, I was like, I got
one more ride in me, you know, And I got up there and I maybe
got a quarter way down and I waslike, Oh no.
Like my knees, I was starting, my legs were getting shaky and I
(13:29):
was like, I still got to get offthis mountain and I should have
stopped when I was still feelinggood.
I should have went to the clubhouse, get the hot cocoa,
kind of relax, wait for the friends to finish off their last
run instead of pushing it. Anyway, I digress.
This is what happens. This is what we do.
Let's hop on to the next tech onthe underwater treadmills, joint
protection, things like that. Let's talk about this joint
(13:52):
protection and benefits of having these underwater
treadmills, especially for theseNFL teams.
This is huge. I mean, we were in the White
Sox. They had underwater pools.
The underwater treadmills are expensive, but they're really
nice. It's almost, I actually would
think this is a little bit better than the the G
treadmills. You guys know they're very hard
to find, but you basically strapyourself in and it lower.
(14:15):
It lowers the resistance you canhave on there.
I've had a couple high level players, soccer players and
basketball players that are basically almost pro level to
pro level and they usually you use this and you can see the
recovery difference is huge, right.
But again, the challenge here islike, how do you get access to
this? Like, I'll be honest with you,
outside of working with the teams, I've never even seen an
underwater treadmill. So like, it's not like you go to
(14:35):
the gym and you're like, you're like, oh, there it is, right.
Like it's expensive. Like they have these treadmills
actually for dogs that go underwater, but it's I don't
think it's the same, the same caliber.
But nonetheless, the the idea isthat obviously it's just like
blood flow restriction, right? You want to put load on the
joint, you want to have mobilityon the joint without putting a
lot of load, right. So when I tell patients like you
(14:57):
need 25% of your weight on the joint, well, you know when you
get in the water, you lose a lotof that weight, right?
It's buoyant. And so can you do this therapy
low load the joint, not 'cause inflammation and then get
stronger, right? The, the whole key between like
PRP and all these other injections is can we find a way
to get that knee to not be so swollen so that you can
(15:18):
strengthen the area around it And then therefore you can
recover back to the level you were at without having continued
setbacks? I mean, like, I, like I asked
multiple patients today that arerecovering from my surgeries.
You know, the number one complaint was like, hey, my knee
still feels a little bit swollen.
It still feels a little bit sore.
I feel like I can't get the strength I want back because
it's still a little bit bothersome.
That's pretty part. That's the part of the normal
recovery. But women have found a way to
(15:38):
reduce that, right? If all these patients just went
to the underwater treadmill, they could get it back.
So this is a big deal. Now, again, we've talked to and
we will talk to more strength coaches for professional teams,
right? And these strength coach special
teams will tell you that everyone has different
philosophy, right? There's a there's a general
philosophy. But these strength and kitchen
(15:58):
coaches, which we we don't want to let onto new episodes coming
up, but we've had a few we've talked to and that, you know,
they, if they have a different philosophy, they'll say, hey, I
think I know I tried the most best for me, this is best for
me. You know what type of thing.
So they're not always going to have the same stuff.
Now again, they also, they're very competitive, right?
So someone's like, yeah, the Chiefs have it.
I'm sure the other teams are going to be considering it.
So. Oh yeah, definitely Force
(16:21):
plates, jump asymmetry. We're going to talk about that.
They're they're saying that the teams are known to use force
plate plate testing. Talk about force plates and how
they're so beneficial for recovery.
Yeah, well, this is huge. I mean, we just saw this
recently. You probably saw the when we
showed the pro mobility video for Driveline and you saw the
(16:45):
guys jumping. That's the forest plates.
So the idea behind this is obviously asymmetry is humongous
problem. I mean for especially for soccer
players, right, that increase the risk of ACL like these
females, they land they land in valgus.
So I had, you know, three femaleor more than maybe four female
ACL just today, this morning. And and they were all young
(17:06):
females and they probably landedin, you know, they were
attacked. They were injuries like on the
field somewhere hit somewhere every but females are a much
more common risk. And so something like this, you
know, in athletes to find the the how you're how you're
landing. So that's a preventative
situation, but also for professional athletes,
especially for these professional teams, if the
players like, Oh, I feel great, but they're like, wait a second,
(17:28):
no, you're not great, right. Like this thing is off from this
one. And when we look at a testing,
we generally do asymmetry for Acls in recovery.
And so if you are do, if your strength is down, your power is
down, you have imbalances in that one knee, You're not ready
to go back right, even from a short period of time.
But you know, the most commonly studied injury is Acls.
(17:50):
But there's so many of the things that we do and there's so
many long recoveries, like it's really important for you to have
this in the jump. Asymmetry is that whole motion
from the initial take off to landing.
And that's really where the power comes from.
So you really want to make sure you're powering the whole leg
appropriately. Yeah, and that was a great segue
to talk about, you know, if you haven't checked out our episode
(18:11):
with driveline, that that's a good one.
So check that one out as well. We're going to go on to the next
one. Sleep trackers.
We've talked about this in the past.
I, I got to be honest with you, sometimes they make me a little
bit nervous. I got to be honest, I wake up, I
saw that I didn't sleep as well.So obviously if you're going to
work out, it kind of tells you. Take it easy.
(18:34):
But at the same time it makes mea little bit nervous going.
I hope I got a good night's sleep because if not, you know,
it makes me feel a certain way. I don't know, I'm a little bit
weird. I don't know if anybody else
feels that way, but when it comes to sleep trackers, great
to know how I'm going to preparefor the activity level in my day
and how hard I'm going to hit the gym.
But the same time there's kind of like this competitive thing
(18:56):
going, you know, I want to hit an X amount of percent on my
sleep recovery. There it is.
I don't think that you're weird.I think that that's exactly what
your other Co host does. So I think that what you're
feeling is totally normal. That's the point of these apps,
right? They get you hooked, they get
you you're like addicted to yoursleep.
But the problem you have is thatyou this is so we had a while
(19:21):
ago now, maybe multiple years, we had someone come in who used
to be a Navy SEAL and they do a lot of corporate stuff.
So As for surgeons, we're known for high stress environments,
very similar to some of these some stressful things, and they
do a lot of stuff with professionals like that or
athletes and help them get theirstuff back.
So companies will kind of monitor the sleep and actually
help working with your staff andsay, hey, listen, you got 6
(19:42):
surgeons on your staff or you'vegot 20 players or 53 players on
your team and half of them are like totally under slept.
All right, So that is actually ahuge deal.
We were just this will be a goodtopic.
Maybe we can have this later will.
But longevity, right? That's just athletics.
But in longevity, write an article just.
Top 10 won't go through all of them, but one of the number one
(20:02):
things is outside of exercise was sleep.
You're writing it down. I like it, but the, the the
sleep issue is humongous and it's the one that we can do It's
kind of messed up, but it's actually one of the easiest of
all the things that we can do for optimization, but it's also
the hardest because it means we can't be doing fun stuff.
(20:23):
We have to sleep. We have to like go to bed early.
We have to like prioritize and even and though I continually
harp on this and I know that if I get one more hour sleep, I
think I'll perform better and I can know when I my numbers go
from, you know, I'm like A7. I'm a 6A low 6 is I'm really
it's AI can get through one or two days, but I really, I really
(20:44):
need to be a 7. And if I get 8, I'm like killing
it, right? But 8 might be too much if I'm
hyped up before surgery. So I'm more like A7.
See, I know my numbers. So the, the fact is, like when
I'm at a, if I hit 5, three daysin a row, that's a disaster.
And so if you're an athlete, it's the same way, but you don't
know it until you're tracking it, right?
Like I used to never know it until I had my Apple Watch.
(21:04):
And now I kind of know. And I actually, and you're
right, but there is definitely amental component.
Like am I looking and saying, OhGod, it says 55 hours and 30
minutes? Like that's not good, right?
And I don't know how well they work because I feel like
sometimes I get less sleep than it actually says I did and
things like that. But I, I definitely know that it
gets me. I think it alerts you more to it
and it makes you more aware and it prioritizes something that's
(21:24):
a very simple fix. And so it makes perfect sense to
me why sleep quality and duration is so important.
And I, I hate to say it, but my,the patients ask me all the
time, like, what else can I do? And like, this should be brought
up right? Like you can sleep more during
your recovery and, and you got to find ways to do that.
You got to be active. You got to, you know, shut down
(21:45):
the electronics an hour before you got to get clear the mind.
I mean, it's nothing like the worst possible thing I've ever,
I ever do in the last few weeks was check my e-mail 2 minutes
before I went to bed and found an e-mail that made me
frustrated for some reason or another.
I mean, it had to happen to me last week.
It was the stupidest thing ever.And so you can't do that stuff
to yourself. You really have to stay.
You have to really focus on justclear your mind.
(22:07):
It's hard, you know, it's, it's amazing.
Like you, you've heard Mark Wahlberg talk about I go to bed
at 8:00 AM and I wake up at at, you know, I'm sorry, 8:00 PM,
wake up at 4:00 AM and I go workout in the train and go, there's
that eat and go back and train and work out and sleep.
And that when you go on the David Goggins of the world and
so many other high level athletes and performers, I'm
(22:30):
envious that they're able to be so dedicated and get to bed and
get X amount of sleep. Now, I don't know if they're
lying. I don't know if it's just the
social media, you know, where they're saying they're doing XY
and Z and you know, maybe most of the time they are and they're
not. But it's a hard thing.
Like you, as you preface it, it's easy, it's simple, but it's
(22:51):
not so. I think actually we should try
to find a sleep expert. This is going to be really good.
I have it right now. Sleep and longevity.
We're we're ready to go. We're definitely ready to go.
So the sleep, so one more thing on the sleep.
So another thing is they showed professional athletes and some
of the best athletes in the world like sleep a ton.
Ronaldo, he does, they said he does 14 hours a day.
(23:12):
Now again, I don't know how that's possible.
Is he the dad? I don't know.
We. Need to show the.
We need to show the sleep? There's this, there's a sleep
bar graph. I know we're, I know we're going
to, I know we're going off topic, but there's a sleep bar
graph which we need to show the the viewers at some point.
And it shows a bell curve. And there are, there is majority
of people are in the 7:00 to 8:00.
(23:33):
There are people in the 9 to 10 and 11 hours.
I know my best friend is actually in a 10 hour person,
which is unusual. He gets crazy.
Yes, I know and he'd be laughingif you heard me talking about
this, but he's a solid 9 to 10. Every time we were college
roommates, it was 9 to 10 hours solid.
And it I there is people on the double curve, but there are also
people which have these special abilities that can do 4 to 5.
(23:56):
And so this will be a great topic to come up with later
because I kind of love this idea.
I love thinking about this because I always wish I was a
four to five, but unfortunately the four to five also lives
shorter. So there is a the whole nother
discussion topic. My my wife has a an incredible
skill set that she can take a nap.
We could stay up for an hour andthen it'll be like bedtime and
(24:17):
she can go back to bed and not have any issues.
I take a nap, I'm up to 2:00 in the morning.
I don't know how she does it. It's a superpower.
It's. Amazing.
It's a superpower. It's your wife, and you just
shouldn't ask questions. That's the problem.
The problem is that you're even thinking about you.
I'm making sure she's not looking at me.
I think she follows us. We might be screwed right here.
(24:37):
We're going to have to mute thisout.
That's all right. OK, I will.
I'm going to edit this out. All right, let's talk about
helmet sensors. We've talked about that.
The helmets, we talked about theGuardian.
There's so many, so much that's kind of going toward the helmet,
toward the sensors. Let's just kind of get into a
little bit more about that and the benefits of the helmet
(24:58):
sensors and how teams are utilizing them.
I just kind of, I put this together and said the NFL had a
pilot program using helmet sensors to measure impact, but
this was suspended due to concerns over data accuracy.
And we're going to get into thatreal quick and reliability.
According to Science and ESPN, while the specific program was
halted, the league continues to research and invest in advanced
(25:20):
concussion assessment tools, including eye tracking
technology and impact sensing mouth guards.
Doctor Garcia, when it comes to accuracy and reliability, that's
one thing. And then going into the other
assessment tools, what are your thoughts on that?
I don't mean to smile, but I'm smiling because this happened to
(25:40):
us on our teams. So we had the tracking sensors,
the impact sensors and one time my trainer looks at me and she
goes check this out and like theplayer was just running around.
It just showed they had a massive impact.
So there there is some inaccuracy in the sense that it
might over call things or sometimes it doesn't doesn't
register it. Now again, that was 3 year old
(26:01):
tech not in the NFL And so was it the top of the line?
I don't know. The challenge you have obviously
is they're getting hit. They have these like chips in
them and registering. And you also got to be really
careful, right? Because the last thing you want
to do is pull out your player during a playoff game because it
says they got hit really hard and they have no symptoms.
And then you got to do a full assessment.
So this is really complicated. And the other thing is like,
(26:24):
what do you do with that data, right?
Like if you if you see it and they get hit, but you know it's
not accurate, but now you got itdocumented as a team position
that this player just had a massive hit.
You kind of have to pull them out for medical legal reasons.
So it's really tricky. And the NFL, obviously there's a
lot of money and there's both two sides of the story, right?
There's the owners and the players association.
(26:45):
And so did the, did the players want them tracking them?
The players don't want to get pulled out because all of a
sudden now they, they took, theytook 60 snaps instead of 170 or
80 snaps. And maybe they dropped their
contract, right? And they're going to be like,
oh, well, you keep getting hits on the, on the thing.
So there's the this is a business, this is a, this is a a
big, a lot of money involved with this and unfortunately you
(27:05):
want to protect the players. But the same point, there may be
situations where if you don't want to have mismanagement of
the system or inaccuracies. So until it's perfect, it's
going to be really challenging and it's going to be a lot of
work. We know this is like always on
the forefront of them because concussions.
We've talked about this at nauseam, especially with the
recent two episode we had and other issue, other episodes
(27:26):
we've had regarding this, like this is this is their hot dog.
If they could choose one thing to figure out and be done with,
it'd be concussions. Yeah, I, I agree over anything
else, right. So and that whatever, I'm not
going to get into it because we've we've gotten into this
discussion and you know, so anyway, I'm going to move on
because we're already Yip yapping for almost 28 minutes.
(27:47):
So let's kind of show this here.The trends last year, apparently
everything kind of went down a little bit 17% overall, less
concussions, kickoff concussion 43% with the new rule.
So it's some of those I'll just quick recap you no longer
allowed to run down the field. You're no no longer able to load
(28:08):
up extra players on either side of the ball has to be the same
amount of players you're kickingoff into a specific area and
then no one's starting to run until the ball is caught or
lands in that area. So the the collisions are less,
you don't have someone running down 3040 yards to field before
they smash into somebody. So that's makes sense that the
(28:31):
concussion rules have led to less concussions.
A drop of 43% kick off leg strains.
It's really kind of interesting.48% lower extremity strains in
general. I don't know what to make of
that with this. What does that mean lower
extremity strains? Is that just kind of fall under?
I think that's like hamstring quad Achilles.
(28:54):
And it makes sense, right? Because I'm assuming that's not
just the the kicker, but like you're going full like those
guys go so much faster than the average player because like most
time, like you're not getting a breakout, right?
Like maybe the wide receivers are running for a route, but
generally unless there's an explosive play, they're not very
far distances. But the kickoffs, you're just
(29:16):
going as fast as you can. And a lot of those players
aren't playing the rest of the game right, so they're not
warmed up. And then they're like, let's
just go as fast as we can to make my mark.
I got to get the tackle so they'll Take Me Out of special
teams to put me in the regular game. 100% and that and that is
coached right. You know, you've, you work with
high school football teams. I've worked with high school
football teams. That is something that we used
(29:36):
to say you run down there and ifyou're, if you're the first one,
be the first one down there running through the end zone.
Even if you see unfair, you know, catch a ball, they're
running through the end zone. So that kind of piggybacks
they're flying as fast as they can and having these collisions.
We talk about cost not only in this show, but on on previous
shows, the cost of injuries, right?
(29:59):
We we mentioned it when we were talking about basketball and now
we're talking about football. It's just some of the numbers
there Bucks 23 million last year, 21 million for the
Steelers. And this is not even true
numbers to me. I think that.
Some of these numbers are true. Yeah, they're, they're not, or
that's just a portion of some ofthose numbers, not including the
(30:21):
ones that got hurt before the season started that went right
to the IR, you know, things likethat.
So, but it it becomes interesting as far as a topic of
just saying injuries cost money and NFL and every professional
team are going to do everything possible to reduce injuries,
(30:41):
whether it's tech, whether it's sleep, whatever it is, they're
going to keep investing in that money.
Well, and I had to say this, butno matter how expensive
everything is, it's not nearly as expensive as the player
getting hurt. So there is there I know the
cost of a lot of these things and they are not even close to a
20 million. They can't they won't know what
(31:04):
team's going to pay that money. But the fact is you have
something that's, you know, we talked about products on here.
There's sometimes 200, five, 100,000.
That's a lot of money for the average person.
But for an NFL player that's making 20 to $30 million a year,
that's around. I mean, we talked about what,
before 50? 5 million a year?
What if he's out for the year $55 million investment?
(31:25):
Or what about we talked about this before with like LeBron
spends $1,000,000 a year on his thing.
That's a, that's like a, that's a rounding error for him.
That's nothing. But you know how much time much
he can get for that A lot because $1,000,000 is still a
lot of money. And so as a result, these guys
will do whatever it takes. And there's no number we we
could we can go at nauseam different players.
You might not probably don't have time to go through
everything. But the the idea behind this is
like, if you find anything that reduces injuries, it's game
(31:48):
changer. That's why the guardian helmets
blew up, right? He's like reduce the concussions
for practices, increase it for certain players.
Like that's a big freaking deal.I mean, concussions are a
nightmare. Yeah, yeah.
And you know, and we've seen it.We'll talk about a couple
players and then we'll just kindof wrap it up.
Obviously our focus was on the tech and you know, the some of
(32:09):
the excitement about the NFL, but key players to kind of look
at Matthew Stafford, 37 years old, low back disc issues.
He's had back issues in the past.
He's played her tough guy throughout his career, long
career concerned because once again, lot of money starting
(32:29):
quarterback for the Rams. You know, if he stays healthy,
they have a team that can be a playoff team.
When I say low back disc issues,what is your red flag?
I mean, red flag is the idea behind like what's that?
Not only is the disc out, but isthere more damage to the actual
the two spaces and it becoming alittle bit of arthritis in that
(32:50):
area? And he has a disc, he's getting
injections, probably getting PR PS doing traction.
He's doing all sorts of fancy things under the sun, but he's
not going to get a surgery and right.
So he's got nerve issues. You know, lower back pain from
disc can happen. That's really common and the
nerve issues are the preaker problem, right, because if he
starts getting nerve weakness, he herniates more like those are
bigger issues. And we know we've had a couple
(33:11):
other high level players, the basketball realm just recurrent
right and those things are nasty.
I mean this I've had this before.
It's horrible. And so the idea is like you
don't you really don't want to do it.
You don't want to have, if you can and obviously of all the
injuries like you get a, you have an injured arm or
something, you can still throw, you get a little bit of a leg
injury. You can still push through it,
but lower back like everything'sinvolved with that.
(33:32):
So anyhow, it's it's not it's not a great thing, but to get
these tend to be more chronic and I bet you'll play through
it. He'll, you know, get an
epidural, make it four or five games, throw one more epidural
in there. They'll get him through the
season with this most likely. You've had back issues, you've
had back pain. How does a 275 LB man running at
you and then hitting you and laying on top of you?
(33:53):
How does that? How does your how does your back
feel when I say that? Well, if you're paying me $55
million, I might change my response.
But if I had to just take that hit and not get anything for it,
I think the answer is that I'd be very pretty terrified.
Oh, man, Tyree Kill one of the most explosive wide receivers in
the NFL. He's coming back from an oblique
(34:16):
injury, right? This core injury for an
explosive wide receiver, not a big frame of player.
I'm not sure if that matters, whether the the size of the
player, but what are some of theconcerns with with this type of
injury? Well, these injuries suck.
Like that's all I got to say. I mean, so the, the answer is
that like the, the problem with the obliques that people don't
(34:37):
realize is like all your power comes from your core, right?
Like they're like use your core,use your core.
So these oblique injuries, theserib injuries, the intercostal
injuries, they are really, really tough.
They're painful. There's really nothing you could
do. I can tell you this because I
just recovered from one of these.
I was foiling and I fell at 20 miles an hour and I had a bad
intercostal and I thought it wastotally fine, right?
I could push through it. And after the week of trying to
(34:59):
push through it, it just got worse and worse and worse.
You couldn't do core exercises. You can't do anything.
You can't run, you can't lift even though every other part of
your body feels good. It's literally just hurts to do
anything. So these, this is a, this is
going to be a challenge for him.He's, you know, he relies on
speed, right? That explosive speed that he
has. The other challenges that just
they're usually not fixed and you just sit there and wait for
(35:21):
them. Now again, the challenge is
which type of core injury? There's lots of core muscles.
So if it's something he can get through, maybe he'll push
through it. I mean, if he doesn't want to
wait for it to reinjure, it doesn't heal.
It could happen continually and then it could full tear.
Now again, it depends, right? There's there's always like 3
levels of most of these. There's like the partial tear,
(35:42):
there's or the the like small tiny tear.
There's a full, near full tear and then full, full tear.
Full tear is usually surgery. Again, depends on this area,
probably has a one or two, probably more like A2 if they're
bringing it up. But I mean they'll generally
these do end up returning to stuff.
So I think it's just going to bea little bit of challenge.
This player is not going to playthis season.
(36:05):
Rashawn Slater, he signed a massive contract with the with
the Chargers trying to protect their quarterback.
As we talk about injuries for quarterbacks, the Patella tendon
rupture, even though he's not going to play, it's something
that's kind of right up your alley.
So I wanted to bring it up. You know, what does that entail,
especially for a man that size? He's going to miss the entire
(36:27):
season. You know that Patella tendon
rupture. How does that affect him going
forward? I mean, this used to be the
player killer, right? I mean, with this before some
newer techniques, this was a 50%return to sport, so one of the
lowest in the NFL. I've talked about this before on
previous, I think radio shows. Then I think we had it on here a
while ago. But this is, this is not a good
(36:48):
one. The good news is that we've got
some new stuff. I mean, they'll do standard
repair. We've got videos even on the
website of how we do this kind of enhanced repairs that, you
know, they now we add, now we add internal braces.
If you've done correctly, it's, it's a little bit trickier to
set the internal brace of this because it's so much flexion.
So you don't want to obviously put an internal brace, it
doesn't move. But there are there are lots of
tricks that these docs can do with some newer implants and
(37:10):
techniques. And we have definitely seen a
higher return to sport over the last few years with this injury.
So I wish him well. But this is a solid 7-8 months.
I saw Christian McCaffrey I'm kind of jumping around to have a
long list of injuries, but you know, for time I'm going to jump
around and kind of key on some of the the top players.
(37:31):
Christian McCaffrey, 49ers running back, All Pro Stud.
Coming off the season that he sustained an Achilles injury.
We're going to talk about some of the recovery a little bit
later on. What are some of the concerns?
He's had quite a few injuries, even though his production has
been high. He's had a lot of injuries
throughout his career. But some of the concerns with
(37:52):
that Achilles injury besides, you know what we've normally
talked about. I mean, the challenge with him
is it's, it's not a full rupture, right?
So it's just like dealing with the inflammation, dealing with
the inflammation, bilateral tendonitis is not ideal, you
know, and this is also a guy, like you said, he's very
productive, but he's he continues getting injured.
I mean, it took him all people couldn't figure out what was
(38:13):
going on with him for weeks, right?
He just wasn't back, right? That's never good.
Like The thing is, if they're not publicizing what he has,
they might not know how to fix it.
What? What does that mean?
Bilateral Achilles tendonitis? It just for the people that
don't really understand what. That means, I'll be honest,
it's. Clear, right?
But what does that? Mean, I mean, Achilles
(38:33):
tendonitis is basically like it continues to hurt.
The idea of that tendonitis means that there's inflammation
in the tendon. So he's just got every time he's
running and there's probably a pain in the back of his ankle.
The challenge is right, like, isthis tendonitis going to lead to
rupture? Well, bilateral rupture is
pretty unusual. Achilles can happen.
Kitchen Mccaffrey's not really the type of guy that would get
(38:54):
it, but he could get it right. You know what I mean?
Like usually it's bigger guys like the the defensive ends and
you know, the linebackers. He's a little bit built a little
bit differently from that. But it can always happen to any
of these high level sprinting players.
But I mean, that guy has tried everything.
You know, I think he went to Germany for some special type of
cell injections. He's gone.
(39:15):
He's doing. Gyro stem.
You know that doing a button here you go not to start any,
any, any rumors here, but the 49ers traded for Washington
Commanders starting running backBrian Robinson right before the
start of the season. So going back to what did the
49ers know? Even though Mccaffrey's saying I
(39:36):
look good, I feel good, I sound good, you know, everything is in
order. But the 49ers go, yeah, we're
going to trade for another running back yet, you know,
besides what they have. So, you know, if you're in the
room, what's the, what's the thought process there?
Thought process is you need an insurance policy.
I mean, he could do everything he wants.
But the problem you have is a lot of this is talk like we've
talked about before, like we talk about all this tech, but
(39:58):
does it really work right? Is it really getting you that
much better? Like, yes, but like do you, I
mean, McCaffrey would be good probably without any of this
stuff, right? Like he he was, he's naturally
talented, right? And he's he's the same thing we
talked about with some of these other players, right?
Even when they're a little bit injured, they're still better
than most. So the, the challenge is, are
(40:19):
you going to be able to pick up and right?
And he, he knows he's now more on the chopping block than
before, right? He's been out so much.
Is it worth paying and is it worth doing all his things?
And hate to say it, he's kind ofgetting old for running back.
Yeah, he's a. Tremendous lifespan of running
back serves challenge. Yeah, I mean, he's exciting.
He's great to watch. You know, it's just injuries,
(40:40):
right? I want to touch on two more
players and then we'll get readyto wrap it up.
Jonathan Brooks from the Panthers ACL.
The reason I bring it up becausethere's biologics, there's some
graphs shifting. Is this a Lavender style kind of
surgery that Jonathan Brooks mayhave gone through?
(41:01):
Is is it our buddy Chad Lavender?
Is he involved with something like this?
I wouldn't be surprised with this one.
The challenge here is that the biologic ACL requires a quad, so
it's a different type of graft. The issue you have is that a
lot, even though the quad ACL isa very popular graph, I do a lot
(41:21):
of it's actually majority of my Acls, which is the similar thing
that what Lavender was saying, the challenges that Patella
tendon, which is what most of the professional athletes get.
Like even Elatros, who's amazingsurgeon, he if he, he's, he
loved, he likes the quad idea, but he's kind of like in the in
the NFL, he's like, I'm not NFL player.
I'm not going to mess with it, right?
I'm going to do the Patella tendon.
(41:43):
That's what we've been doing foryears.
That's the that's the option. And so, but we all know that
like nowadays with this, with the media and agents hearing
more stuff like something like the Lavender ACL would get
picked up on and potentially could he return a bit faster?
Yes. But we also heard from Lavender
and he wanted to emphasize this.This is not like four months,
(42:04):
this is 6 months. So it depends on when he has the
ACL tear is even worth it, right?
You know what I mean? Or it's just like they're going
to. The thing is, to me, I tell
people there's no downside If you want to return in the same
window, but you want to have thebiologics to hopefully help
enhance the bone to bone, the healing of the tendon, there's
no downside. But the cost, right?
For in the NFL, they don't care because it's a small cost.
(42:26):
But for my, I mean, a patient this day that asked about the
fertilized ACL, they wanted to bio ACL and I said, here are the
risks. Here's the benefits from the
podcast. Here's from understanding my
research, you know, and they andthey opted and that says
actually to not do it. But sometimes they play, you
know, I have someone, I have onea couple weeks that wants to do
this. They want everything under the
sun to get back to the best possible.
Yeah, that that'll be interesting to see how he
(42:48):
recovers and and get a little bit more information.
Last but not least, really, he was in the running for defensive
player of the NFL last year. The heart and soul of the
Detroit Lions. I think if he would have been
healthy, I think they could havegone to the Super Bowl.
I think they potentially could have beaten the Eagles and
(43:08):
advanced Aiden Hutchinson for the Detroit Lions went to
University of Michigan. Tibula, fibula fracture,
surgical nail fixation, Advancedbone stem.
What the hell does all of that mean?
So you you said it well, which is good.
(43:28):
So basically we've had this before some of the players where
they snap the mid shaft. This is actually what Alex Smith
had, but his was open much worse.
So when you break the middle of the the bone in the tibia, it
can just be a break, which is bad.
It can be a break with a hole, it can break with a bigger hole.
And the bigger the hole, the increased risk of infection and
wound complications, which is what Alex Smith had.
(43:51):
But a clean break with maybe a poke hole or nothing.
Usually what they do is they canput a rod down there.
The nice thing about the rod is that it's instantaneously
stabilized and it's inside the knee.
So the incisions are really small, right?
You go from a certain angle, youusually put it from the top down
in someone's leg and it can staythere permanently from the
kneecap, correct? There's two ways to do it, but
(44:12):
usually from the kneecap areas, the way you do it and then.
Permanently. Or is it something that's an
option to take out? Because I've heard different
variations. Go ahead.
So generally you just take out the screws that hold it in.
Imagine you got to like, you know, you got the big pipe in
there and you got to pin it right to keep it in there.
So a lot of people get the screws out because taking the
pipe out is a nightmare. You can do it, but you can
(44:35):
imagine it's very hard once it grows in to try to pull that
thing out. So that's actually right.
And they they're healing around it as well.
Like we have one guy in our office, our PA that loves to
take him out. So it takes him like 30 minutes
of just hammering to get this thing out and we literally
haven't come to every case. He gets so excited to help out.
But anyhow, so the the Long story short is like, generally
(44:55):
we leave the metal in there and then the advanced stem.
I mean, the idea here is like, can we make someone heal faster,
right? Like that's the whole point of
the biologics. Can we can and again, the stem
for our general patient be really hard to get, right?
Like I can't get these. I can't get these approved half
the time for insurance unless they have a really, really bad
issue. But obviously, you know, no big
deal, just throw some money at it and get it to heal.
(45:17):
The bone simulators do help. And so the idea is like
anybody's willing to do, if it was me and I had to pay out of
pocket to so I could heal and walk faster and run faster two
months later, earlier, I'd definitely do it.
Wow, OK, I'm grossed out a little bit on that one.
Before we wrap up, are you? Are you?
(45:38):
I think you want some trivia, right?
You want a little trivia, littleNFL trivia to kick off the
season? Everybody loves this part.
I think I know you love it. This is your favorite part.
This is better than surgery right now.
I love it. I love it.
OK, listen, Week 8, if nobody gets hurt, this is which is
we're talking about injury. Michael Pennix from the formerly
(46:00):
from the University of Washington for Atlanta Falcons
is going to match up with Tua Taco Viola.
It'll be the first time since 2000, I believe 12 since 2:00.
left-handed quarterbacks have started against you, against
each other, which is really, really interesting.
Can you name the last? There's only been 2 Super Bowl
(46:24):
winners, Super Bowl quarterbacks.
Can you name either one of them that have won a Super Bowl?
The last left-handed quarterbackto win a Super Bowl?
One of two. I like even I had him trying to
think about them playing, but then half the time you see him,
they're like you're seeing him from the other directions, so
you don't even know. I don't know.
(46:44):
We'll say Kurt Warner. He's not left-handed.
I have no idea. This is absolutely impossible
trivia. All right, so the hard one is
Ken Stabler. Jake the Snake finally got into
the Hall of Fame postmortem. And Steve Young.
Steve Young. I.
(47:06):
Last left-handed quarterback? Interesting.
There's only been 11 left-handedquarterbacks to come into the
NFL since Michael Vick got drafted back in 2001.
That's crazy. Well, it's less common.
I mean, I'm left-handed. It's 10%.
Why? Why do you think that?
Real quick before we wrap it up,why do you think that we're not
seeing left-handed quarterbacks in the NFL?
(47:30):
Well, First off, there's not an advantage.
So if you're not an advantage like in baseball, there's an
advantage, right? Like in.
You're on to something. I that's my thought.
I think what you're doing is you're getting left-handed hard
throwers and you're getting themto commit to baseball, which.
Is more lucrative. It's much more lucrative.
(47:51):
That's my. So yeah, I mean, I agree with
you. That's my guess.
What we're not seeing left-handed quarterbacks, but
they go and wait. If you're left-handed and you
throw 98, don't go throw a football.
Go throw a baseball and we'll make you filthy rich and a 275
LB man is not going to land on. Well, I also would say that you
don't have to be as good and left-handed.
(48:12):
Does that make sense? So like you're not even like
they're not even getting that level.
Like if they're that good, they're getting recruited hard
from the baseball, but like they're just baseball.
Baseball's pulling anybody that's a decent thrower that's
left-handed because they're so they're so much less common,
right? Like if you have, if 10% of the
population is left-handed, ideally you have the same amount
of throwers that are right. You, you have the same, probably
(48:33):
less, you have only 10% that throw as hard as right handers.
That's a small pool and then they're throwing them so much
money on them because they're souncommon.
But that's why you see so many more left handers in MLB.
But it's actually not even closeto equal.
All right, let's say goodbye. We went over our time because
that's what happens. Thanks for listening to
sports.talkcheckusoutsports.talk.com.We have transcripts, we have
(48:57):
shows. Check out our polls.
We are getting requests for topics and new shows.
Thank you for everyone that's reached out to us.
We've had plenty of people reached out and e-mail us.
We're very thankful for our guests.
So I don't know what else to say.
Doctor Garcia, you want to wrap it up?
(49:18):
Yeah. So thanks again for all
listeners and for the, we had a lot of guest requests this
summer, so hopefully you have tosee some of those show up.
And again, if you're interested in being a guest in the show,
let us know. Obviously it's important to us
that, you know, we get a lot of quests that may not fit the
showbook. We're really going to try to
stick with this sort of orthopedic sports kind of
innovation topic. But you know, it doesn't hurt.
(49:40):
Reach out and we'll we'll vet itand see if it works for us.
So thank you. We really appreciate everybody.
Let's go Big Blue, baby.
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