- 7 minutes ago
Seth and Sean talk with injury expert, Dr. David Chao, about the health of the SB QBs, the Joe Mixon mystery injury, and if CJ Stroud and Nico Collins having multiple concussions is something to worry about moving forward.
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00:00We're pleased to sit down next to a live guest right now.
00:02A doctor.
00:03A doctor.
00:04Who can check your eyeball out for you.
00:06Yes.
00:06I threw a Tide Pod at Sean earlier in the week, and it came out of my hand faster than I thought,
00:12and I was trying to hit him in the chest.
00:14It hit him right in the eye.
00:15Yeah.
00:15Yeah.
00:16So Dr. Chow is who we're talking to right now.
00:19Is there any ophthalmology in your background at all, Dr. Chow?
00:22Well, you've got another eye, so you'll probably be there.
00:24Yeah.
00:24See?
00:25That's what I said.
00:26He's like, Sean's rolling around over here like he doesn't have an extra eye.
00:30Yeah.
00:30Yeah.
00:31Seth said he got two of them, and I'm like, God ain't making any more of them.
00:34That's the problem.
00:35So that's the give and take right now.
00:37We've made up.
00:38It's all good.
00:39Yeah.
00:39It's fine.
00:40It's great to see you.
00:42Yeah.
00:42Yeah.
00:42And, of course, we should mention SICscore.com, your website with all the great injury information
00:49on there that football fans can use on Sundays.
00:53It's been an interesting week.
00:54And when we started the Super Bowl two weeks with both quarterbacks with injury issues,
01:00we sort of broke the injury news on Drake May.
01:03And look at how far we've come.
01:05They're both full practice now.
01:07Yeah.
01:07You know?
01:08And moved on.
01:09You know, it's the cycle, right?
01:10Where were you on Drake May just initially looking at the injury or when we think the
01:16injury happened and the way he was operating after that?
01:18On Monday, two Mondays ago on the Sports Injury Central podcast, after the Denver game, I said,
01:25there's no doubt in my mind that Drake May suffered a new right shoulder injury.
01:31And I named the play and the circumstances.
01:34And I did say I was more worried about Drake May than Sam Darnold because Sam Darnold's
01:40oblique has already been two weeks old and will be four weeks by the Super Bowl.
01:45Whereas on Monday after Denver, this is a new injury.
01:48What's the trajectory?
01:49Yeah.
01:49I never said Drake wouldn't play.
01:51I just said there's more initial concern about it.
01:53New England went net so.
01:55Oh, yeah.
01:55But, you know, it's fine.
01:56I went to school in the Boston area.
01:58I like New England.
01:59But anyways, obviously, limited practice.
02:01He's not.
02:01But now he's full practice.
02:03I think all along it was a mild AC joint sprain.
02:06You can play through that.
02:07And he's going to.
02:08And, you know, look, the magic healing powers of the extra week before the Super Bowl.
02:13Yeah.
02:13The magical drug that every player is on every Sunday and double dose for Super Bowl Sunday
02:19adrenaline.
02:19Oh, yeah.
02:20And then, you know, maybe a vitamin T, toradol a little bit.
02:23And it is something to inject.
02:25Well, you can put some cortisol in it or cortisone in it.
02:28Well, you can put some numbing medication in it for the game.
02:31But he's going to be fine.
02:33I'm curious to see his long ball ability.
02:36That's just a question.
02:37He's been great this year at it.
02:39Look, knowing Coach Frabel, and I love Coach Frabel, he's probably going to have to throw
02:42a long early, you know, first series just to test it out and show Seattle.
02:46So, Dr. Chow from Sixscore.com, do you know what the hell's going on with Joe Mixon?
02:53We keep asking.
02:55Nobody knows what the hell.
02:55I've looked at message boards, but none of that's fit for print, and it's all rumor and
02:59speculation.
03:00We in Houston really just genuinely have zero clue what to expect from Joe Mixon.
03:05Well, we know it's weird and not great, right?
03:08And we knew it early on.
03:10We go, like Drake may, on publicly available information.
03:13Here's the video.
03:14Here's what's going on.
03:15Look, for 17 years with the San Diego Chargers, I saw a player on the field, on the sideline,
03:20in the locker room the next day after an MRI.
03:23Everyone on Monday looks at film, so I started looking at film.
03:26I knew the injury, but then I got to see film the injury.
03:29Now, I don't know the injury.
03:31I just see the film.
03:32But there's no film on Joe Mixon.
03:33And let me tell you, we knew at Sports Injury Central, and we wrote about it and talked
03:37about it, from the get this offseason, when he entered training camp, look, he got put
03:43on NFI, non-football injury.
03:46That was a clear signal something was amiss.
03:49It wasn't related to last year's ankle injury.
03:52And look at how it's played out.
03:53Look, I always say when something doesn't make sense from the outside, and this one clearly
03:58doesn't, we saw the signal of the NFI situation.
04:04It does from the inside.
04:05Nick Casario and company know.
04:07They know.
04:08Eventually, we'll all find out, and it will make perfect sense.
04:13Are there, it did feel though, and I feel like the organization, even though they're not
04:17giving us any actual information about the specifics of the injury, but Nick called it
04:24a medical mystery in his press conference at the end of the season.
04:28Are there conditions where this does happen, where you think it looks like something that
04:34should resolve itself, and then just for whatever reason, it just lingers and lingers and lingers?
04:38Well, there's unique situations that happen.
04:41The unique situation that happens in football, unique situations happen in medicine, and
04:46sometimes things are unpredictable.
04:48It's hard to speculate on what happened, but crazy things do happen.
04:52I would not have thought TJ Watt could have a collapsed lung from dry needling, right?
04:58I mean, they're not doing dry needling.
05:00First of all, it's not even a needle.
05:01It's like a microfilament, and you're not doing it on me.
05:05You're doing it on TJ Watt with muscle this thick.
05:07How did it happen?
05:08I mean, so there are weird things that happen, and it's hard to speculate on Joe Mixon other
05:13than it wasn't standard, and it's non-football injury, and the whole deal.
05:18I guess, yeah, so I don't, and I want to be clear, you're not speculating on Joe Mixon
05:21himself, but what are the things that tend to keep a guy out for an entire year where maybe
05:26it starts off with something minor?
05:27Is it nervous, nervous system, or circulation, or?
05:31Nerve issues could do it.
05:34Circulatory could do it.
05:36Infection could do it.
05:37Weird disease processes could do it.
05:39I'm not trying to go through the exhaustive list.
05:42I mean, we go by, if there's data to analyze, we analyze it, but there's not a lot to data
05:47analyze, but reading the tea leaves with the NFI, it told you everything you need to know that
05:52something was not standard.
05:53Dr. Chow is joining us here live on Radio Row 6score.com, S-I-C-score.com is his website.
06:02The other big injury for the Texans that kept the guy out for the whole year was Tank Dell,
06:05and it seems like there's a lot more clarity on Tank to the point where the team is saying
06:10that there's a really good chance he's back for activities this spring.
06:14It was a devastating knee injury that tore practically everything in there.
06:18What's your assessment of something like that in terms of a guy like Tank Dell who relies
06:22so heavily on twitch and lateral movement and getting open to get to a full recovery with
06:30something like that?
06:31Yeah.
06:32There's good news and bad news there.
06:34The bad news on Tank Dell is, as you indicated, it's a very devastating knee injury.
06:39It is not a standard ACL injury.
06:41There's four main ligaments in the knee.
06:43He tore three of them.
06:44Think of it, four legs on a bar stool.
06:48If one's a little off, okay, but if you lose three legs on the bar stool, so to speak,
06:52that's what happened to him.
06:53That's why he needed two surgeries, stage surgeries.
06:57And so, and as you mentioned, he's a quick twitch little guy.
07:00He's not big body Nico Collins, right?
07:03And he needs the explosion, explosiveness, and to get open and get and be effective.
07:09So this is why it's not surprising to us that the recovery has taken so long.
07:14It's not long.
07:15It's what he needs to do.
07:18And the good news side, I think he's taken very well care of.
07:22The stage surgery is normal due to repair the knee cell reconstruction.
07:26He has the best surgeon around, Dr. Walter Lowe in Houston.
07:30All the players still go to him for all the stuff.
07:33And, you know, he's getting good rehab.
07:34So if anyone can make it back, it's him.
07:37But it is not unexpected that it's taken this long to do so.
07:42What is the – can you reasonably expect, or is it, like, feasible that he could get back to 100% of what he was before after something like that?
07:53Or is it rare to get back to 100%?
07:56Well, let me put it this way, and this is out of tremendous respect for Tank Dell
08:01and for what all professional athletes like yourself accomplish.
08:05I think the everyday guy out there does not realize how high the bar is.
08:10They'll see a guy running on a treadmill and say, oh, he's back.
08:13That's not quite the same thing.
08:16Tank Dell can smoke 99.9% of the world and be healthier than no question in my mind.
08:23But in the NFL, the bar is so high.
08:27And you know the deal.
08:28Point one second faster to the quarterback and you're a pro bowler.
08:32Point one second slower and you're out of the league, right?
08:35I mean, and the margins for Tank Dell are so small with his size and his speed and separation.
08:42If he loses – and I'm not saying he will.
08:44If he loses 5%, that's – you know, look, there's – I think he's had an excellent reconstruction.
08:52He has an excellent chance to return.
08:54Will he be completely the same thing?
08:57It's hard to say, but I'm not trying to doubt him.
09:00The one big thing that made me optimistic was, you know, both between Tank and Nick Asario,
09:06they'd said that he was trying to make a push to play at the end of this past season.
09:10We talked to Nick the other day about the GPS monitoring
09:13and being able to see all of his speed and explosive measurements and everything
09:16because they have his entire career, what his numbers were, his rookie year.
09:20I felt like the fact that they were actually considering him possibly playing at the end of last season
09:26was maybe a much bigger – that wasn't something I expected.
09:29I thought he'd be tabled the entire season no matter what.
09:32Yeah, you're right.
09:33So that is certainly a good sign.
09:35But, you know, people ask me all the time, how long is recovery on something?
09:38Let's say you said it's one year.
09:41Yeah.
09:41Okay, let's just say throughout that number.
09:43It's not like at 364 days you can't.
09:45And on the 365th day you're 100%, right?
09:48There's that little gradual, gradual, gradual progression.
09:52And I think it does bode well for him next year, and I hope he's the same explosive player.
09:56Dr. Chow is joining us here on Radio Row.
10:01LaCour 43 bringing us out here to San Francisco.
10:04Before we get you out of here, one more.
10:06C.J. Stroud suffered his second concussion in his career this season, missed three games.
10:11This is a big offseason for C.J., you know, coming off a bad playoff.
10:15If it's a potential contract year for him or an extension coming up this offseason,
10:20how much should something like two concussions factor in for the Texans
10:23when they're looking at the long term for C.J. Stroud?
10:26Well, look, you always want to be careful on concussions,
10:29and especially if you're into multiple,
10:31and that's the whole point of all the protections of the players.
10:36Not all concussions are the same,
10:38and not all concussions can be graded the same way.
10:41Look, right now, if you momentarily see lights, it's a concussion.
10:47If you're unconscious for three minutes, it's a concussion.
10:50If you have a headache for three months, it's a concussion.
10:52If you're fine immediately after the hit, it's a concussion.
10:56One day, that's like back in the days before MRI, everything was an e-spring,
11:00a torn ACL, and you didn't know what it was.
11:02One day we're going to get to grade 2B occipital lobe concussions are this,
11:07and grade 3C temporal lobe concussions are this.
11:10We're not there yet, so we need to be concerned.
11:13I'm sure that will get factored in.
11:15But, you know, it's endemic to the sport.
11:17I always say football is not a contact sport.
11:19It's a collision sport.
11:20You mentioned concussions.
11:22Nico Collins, one of the things that we said at Sports Injury Central
11:25at the end of the year, that I thought there was no chance
11:28that Nico Collins would play against the New England Patriots.
11:31It was his second concussion this season.
11:34And, you know, look at Tua Tagovaiola, not trying to compare,
11:37but when it's a second rule of thumb, and it's not absolute, rule of thumb,
11:42first concussion in the season out for at least a week,
11:46second concussion in the season out for at least a month,
11:49third concussion in the season out the rest of the season, loose rule of thumb.
11:54That's why it's like Nico Collins wasn't going to get cleared by the independent neuro
11:59no matter how big that playoff game was against New England.
12:01Yeah, short week and everything else to go along with that.
12:06Sixscore.com.
12:08What can the folks find on Sixscore.com?
12:11Well, you know, we do injury analysis on individual teams,
12:16but we're really the only site that will say offense run grade
12:22versus that week's defense run health versus pass health.
12:27Or even, let's say, on fantasy stuff, Nico Collins.
12:32We don't just grade Nico Collins' health.
12:35We look at C.J. Stroud's health.
12:37We look at the health of the offensive line of the Texans
12:39against the health of the pass rushers on the opponent,
12:43against the health of the DBs, et cetera.
12:45So we're probably the only site, and it's called the player edge,
12:49that says Nico Collins this week is plus 27.3
12:52based on the associated numbers, not just Nico Collins' health.
12:56And that can be obviously useful for fantasy, DFS, gambling, or fandom.
13:01So that's kind of what's unique there.
13:03So if you do any of that stuff, DFS, fantasy, gambling,
13:07Sixscore.com is a great place to go.
13:08Thank you much.
13:10SICscore.com.
13:11SICscore.com.
13:12Dr. David Chow joining us here on Radio Row.
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