Cutting through semantics on Brady

E-mail this article

To:

Invalid email address

Add a personal message: Your e-mail:

Invalid email address

Sending your article

Your article has been sent.

In a story by Tim Graham we linked earlier today, there were comments from his personal coach, Tom Martinez, confirming that he did, indeed, play the end of last season with broken ribs. And over at Pro Football Talk, that little nugget has raised a debate over the accuracy of New England's injury reporting.

So I went back to look into the injuries Brady had at the end of last year again, knowing that the quarterback himself didn't want to use them to excuse any problems he had last year.

What I could gather: Brady did, in fact, break three ribs and played through the injury, which has since healed, at the end last season.

In the most serious cases, a blow can drive a broken rib into a player's lung. That didn't happen with Brady. But make no mistake about it -- The quarterback was gutting it out through a serious injury.

Some semantics have come up in this regard. The word in January was they were cracked, not broken. But the truth is, as I was told earlier today, "a broken rib is a broken rib", and that goes for cracks and fractures. And when there is more than one of those, it's hard to downplay all that.

Some breaks are worse than others, of course, as we explained above. But this was bad enough for Brady's effort playing through this, and his broken finger, to be considered mighty commendable.

• Tweet
• E-mail

E-mail this article
To:
Invalid E-mail address
Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail:
Invalid E-mail address

Sending your article
Your article has been sent.