For days, Twitter has been marveling at the revelation Tom Brady, the most decorated quarterback in NFL history, played all of last season with a complete MCL tear. The fact Brady, at 43 years old, could beat Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes in succession en route to winning his seventh Super Bowl is remarkable enough. But doing so on a badly-injured knee adds another impossible-to-fathom layer to Brady’s mystique. So impossible, in fact, that sports medical analyst Dr. David Chao isn’t buying it.
“I don’t doubt his MCL was injured and he needed surgery,” concedes Chao, as transcribed by Sam Amico of Outkick.com. “But the lay person narrative of ‘completely torn’ and ‘heroic’ does not fit the medical facts.”
Chao, a licensed orthopedic surgeon who spent 17 years as head physician of the San Diego Chargers, notes Brady has undergone three MCL surgeries in his career—one in 2008, followed by similar procedures in both 2019 and 2021. However, Chao remains skeptical of Brady’s diagnosis, pointing to the mobility he displayed both during the season and at the Buccaneers’ Super Bowl parade, where he famously heaved the Lombardi Trophy off a boat. “If his MCL was completely torn and unstable, how did he take a boat ride with just a knee sleeve that does not have metal support?” asks Chao. “Brady’s MCL would have been stressed as he lateralled the Lombardi. His actions do not fit the narrative of a ‘completely torn’ and unstable knee.”
Chao estimates that a third of NFL players at any given moment are battling some degree of MCL injury and acknowledges Brady may have encountered “residual problems” from his past knee surgeries throughout the 2020 season. But Chao contends that even Teflon Tom, for all his victory laps eluding Father Time well into his 40s, isn’t capable of playing through an injury of that severity. “In my experience as an NFL head team physician, there is no way anyone could play with a complete (grade 3) MCL tear,” insists Chao. “Brady’s greatness does not need to be embellished with false medical narratives.”
Not that he needs any more accolades to fill out his Wikipedia page, but Brady enters 2021 needing just 1,155 passing yards to eclipse Drew Brees’ all-time mark of 80,358, a feat the future Hall-of-Famer could conceivably accomplish when he makes his much-anticipated return to Foxboro in Week 4.
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