The Danny Amendola medical saga gets more confusing by the day, and no one really knows what to make of it.
Reports have two different doctors issuing conflicting diagnosis on an injury which has lingered since the second preseason game and which was aggravated in the New England Patriots' season opener in Buffalo last week.
On report has the fragile Amendola with a sports hernia that will require surgery and will miss up to six weeks, while another has pegged the injury down to a torn adductor which makes him pretty much week to week - but while the area affected by either is the same, the difference lies in which of two muscles has actually torn as to how the injury is classified.
A groin strain - even a mild one - can be incapacitating, but the swelling will subside and tear eventually heal with a protracted period of rest and a regimen of ibuprofen and topical elixirs...
...as will a sports hernia, the difference being that with a sports hernia, the pain will return incrementally more severe - which may or may not be what we saw just before halftime of the Buffalo game, as Amendola walked limped off the field clutching the area.
This is where the conflict arises. One doctor is saying that Amendola merely aggravated a tear in one of five muscles in his groin called adductors, while the other is saying that the tear is at the point on the pubis where any one of these adductors connects with an abdominal muscle called the oblique.
When an athlete is exerting during competition or training, the adducters and obliques work off of each other and perform different functions. The obliques pull up from the pubis as the midsection flexes and rotates, while the adductors pull down from the pelvis as it is attached to the femur and works in tandem with other muscles to move the bone laterally towards the body...
...which causes a literal tug-of-war between the two muscles and, as is the case with many athletes that concentrate on strengthening the lower body - receivers and cornerbacks in football in particular - the adductors will normally be the stronger of the two and if overexerted, the oblique tears away from the pubis and a sports hernia is diagnosed and surgery is indicated.
It is unclear whether the incident in the end zone in Buffalo a week ago is the result of coming back too soon from a groin strain or if it is actually a tear that requires a more invasive means of repair - but the surgery itself is a microscopic procedure which comes with a recovery time of four weeks, and when combined with the gradual introduction to conditioning, a total amount of time needed to return to the football field is around four to six weeks.
Either way, Amendola is out of action for a period of time to be determined, leaving the Patriots without it's prized free agent pick up from this past offseason and adding to the laundry list of maladies that have defined Amendola since coming into the league.
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