Matthew Stafford: An Optimistic Perspective on the Detroit Lions QB's Injuries

For someone who has missed more games than he’s played over two seasons, Detroit Lions starting QB Matthew Stafford should enter the 2011 feeling particularly healthy.

As many of you know, Stafford started throwing this week.

This marks a big (if not the biggest) step in his recovery from surgery on his AC joint, which he managed to injure twice last year. He says he feels good after tossing the ball around, which is no surprise regardless of whether it’s true or not.

Of course, no Lions fan cares about how Stafford feels in March. It’s all about how he feels in November and December.

After finishing his first two seasons on injured reserve, many believe this is the make-and-please-don’t-break year for Stafford. If he finishes the 2011 season as the starting quarterback, it’s very possible he’ll be making a couple of starts in January, too.

But that’s assuming he gets that far, which really is the core issue. Most likely, a 7-9 season in which Stafford plays 16 games would be better received in Detroit than a 9-7 season in which Stafford plays another three or four games and ends his season with a catastrophic injury.

So I have some positivity to spend around about Stafford’s injuries. I have some “Lions butter,” as listeners of a certain Detroit-area radio station have come to know that sudden rush of blind optimism.

What I have is not some hidden fact about his recovery, or a foolproof method to make sure he plays a full slate of games next season. What I have is little more than a perspective on the oft-injured quarterback that makes the typical doom and dread about his prospective 2011 campaign a little brighter.

And that perspective is that the cumulative toll of the injuries on Stafford’s body should be relatively light next season.

I know, I know. Just pipe down and listen for a second.

Consider the injuries Stafford has sustained so far in his career. A knee injury, a left shoulder injury and two right shoulder injuries.

The knee injury was successfully repaired surgically after the 2009 season, and hasn’t bothered Stafford since.

The left shoulder injury was successfully rehabbed in 2009, and hasn’t bothered Stafford since.

His first shoulder injury in 2009 was supposedly rehabbed, but it took little more than the force of his own body weight to pop it right back out roughly two months later.

We heard time and again that it couldn’t have possibly been an aggravation of the same injury, and I think we all know that’s probably not true. Anyone who has dislocated a joint knows how easy it is to do it again if you don’t go under the knife to get it fixed right.

Coincidentally, the injury that “didn’t need surgery” ended up getting just that shortly after Stafford was ruled out for the season.

Now, I’m not a doctor, trainer or coach. But I am someone who has seen the handling of many, many sports injuries. And what I know is that when an injury that didn’t need surgery during the season ends up getting surgery after the season ends, it means, “This injury needs surgery, but if we put it off until the end of the season, we can get a few games out of this guy without risking his long-term health.”

Think about it. That’s exactly what they did with Stafford’s knee injury.

Stafford’s shoulder injury would have benefited from a surgical repair job as soon as Julius Peppers got off of him. But to do that, the Lions would have had to shelve him for the season after about 28 minutes of play. Instead, they tried to rehab it so he could play the rest of the season.

It might have worked under the best circumstances, but no surgery combined with a minimal rehab time made it easy to reinjure—and that’s just what happened.

So now we head into Stafford’s third season, with everyone crossing their fingers that Stafford is going to be okay.

Except now that Stafford has had his shoulder repaired, it should actually be less prone to reinjury. And that has held true for everything else on the young quarterback’s body.

See, the really concerning thing would be if Stafford has had chronic issues with one body part in particular. If he was coming off his second surgery on the same shoulder, I would be worried. The more times a player injures the same body part, the harder it gets to repair, and the less effective surgery becomes.

Stafford doesn’t have that problem. Sure, there’s the argument that his entire body is just prone to spontaneously shattering, but a guy doesn’t play three years of SEC football and then just become injury-prone.

And to this point, Stafford has yet to reinjure anything that Dr. James Andrews already took care of for him.

So maybe I’m crazy. Maybe overly optimistic. Maybe I’m all slathered up in that infamous Lions butter. But I’m going to look at Stafford’s injuries so far and call it freak coincidence.

Three times he happened to get hit too hard in just the wrong way. One time he reinjured a previous injury that probably should have gone under the knife in the first place.

Next time he'll be okay.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, unless Stafford’s right shoulder sees fit to prove me wrong.