Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers announced through Instagram on Tuesday night that he has been cleared by the Packers medical staff to return to game action after missing the last eight weeks with a fractured right clavicle.
With the Packers currently sitting at 7-6 and likely having to win the remainder of their games — at Carolina, home versus the Vikings, and at Detroit — to have a shot to make the playoffs, a debate has emerged regarding whether playing Rodgers is actually in the Packers’ best long-term interests.
Would playing him be worth the risk of re-injury?
Given the fact that Rodgers has been cleared to play by the team’s physician, it would be appropriate to assume that they believe his right clavicle to be appropriately and fully healed. However, just because his clavicle no longer displays a break upon an X-ray or CT scan, that doesn’t necessarily mean the bone has returned to full strength.
During normal bone healing — referred to as remodeling — a hard, calcified callous forms around the fracture site that more or less mimics true bone. This callous is weaker than bone, but eventually gets converted into bone — through a process known as ossification — beginning at approximately three to four weeks post-fracture. The exact cascade of complex phenomena that leads to the callous becoming bone is beyond the scope of this article.
On average, it takes the newly formed bone roughly 12 weeks to return to its approximate — though not 100 percent — pre-break strength and can take as long as one to two years to return to its original structure.
Due to this, Rodgers is at an elevated risk for re-injury of his right clavicle, but to what extent isn’t exactly known.
It also needs to be considered how any residual pain or discomfort Rodgers is experiencing may affect his throwing mechanics. Altered biomechanics, whether due to pain or muscle weakness, could also at least in theory expose Rodgers to an elevated risk of developing some other shoulder injury, such as impingement or generalized soreness.
However, it’s likely that the Packers would not have made the determination to clear Rodgers had he still been experiencing significant right shoulder pain or stiffness.
At the end of the day, the nature of Rodgers’ injury does place him at an increased risk for re-injury, but obviously, the Packers believe that risk to be minimal.
The Packers medical staff reportedly consulted with “a number of medical experts” outside of their organization when determining whether or not Rodgers should be cleared for play and the fact that he ultimately was given the green light means that they too believed the risk to be slight.
Rogers will be in uniform this coming Sunday and it’s now on him to put the Packers back on his (healed) shoulders and attempt to carry them to the playoffs.
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