Green Light with Chris Long - NFL Injuries & Recoveries with my SL Rams Doc, Dr. Matthew Matava. Stoned Mailbag.

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

1:00 - Open and NFL Updates. 11:40 - Dr. Matava on Alex Smith, Common Sports Injuries, and Famous Sports Injuries and Heroic Efforts from Injured Athletes. 1:20:28 - Stoned Mailbag: Scariest Injuries, Favorite Band Songs, and Movie Theater Snacks. Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of my last memories in St. Louis that was very vivid for me was spent with you was I got IRed one year, you know, my seventh year and then came back. And this was a big make or break year for me coming off an IR season. And we went to Green Bay. I get carted off. I got rolled up on by Robert Quinn. It ends up being a TIB thing. But me and you were thinking maybe it was ACL. And for me, we're sitting in that room, you know, waiting on the Imaging and I'm spaced, just you and me. And I can remember saying, doc, I'm done if this is an ACL. I'm retiring. Happy Wednesday, everybody. It's Chris Long and you're listening to the Greenlight Pod. Man, the NBA is back. Gotta love it.

I've enjoyed it very much. Even though it's super awkward to see them kind of like do that pan in shot of that yellow stucco-ass building at Disney, where the most important sports. spectacle on the planet is occurring in front of like nobody. It's so bizarre. I love the NBA playoffs even now. Feels much different. It doesn't feel as different as hockey feels.

Hockey feels way different to me. And, you know, with the blues not being able to recapture the magic, at least so far in the Stanley Cup playoffs, I've kind of gravitated to the NBA here. And my side team's playing as we speak as I record this open. the Portland Trailblazers. If you're a long-time listener, you know that if you're a Knicks fan, you deserve, you're in fact entitled

to a side team. So my side team, the Blazers, are given the Lakers that work right now. And it's been fun to watch. I think there's something to this all-day model. It kind of feels like the NCAA tournament. Again, I've compared this thing to a regional kind of feel

where there's definitely not as much crowd, but you know, something big is going on. And the NBA, again, has done a magnificent job. Whoever architects, kind of the way they laid this thing out, the camera angles, how it works with the broadcast and, you know, the fans in the stands, the crowd noise, whoever's controlling that, they deserve a raise, making me feel normal. So thank you. Again, MBA is awesome. We'll talk more MBA, maybe Friday, but I might have a really special treat for you Friday

that I'll maybe tease in the stone mailbag that we have coming up after we talked to our guests today. And I did talk to our guests earlier. His name is Matt Matava. If you don't know who Matt Matava is, probably because you don't know a lot of NFL doctors. You can't name a ton of them. You know, you got your famous surgeons and the James Andrews of the world, the Bob Anderson's of the world that you hear on Sports Center when a guy is getting knife. But the team doctors are often, if they're in the news, they're in the news,

for the wrong reasons at times. Matt Matava was a guy that worked with me for a long time in St. Louis. He was my team doc. He's also a really good one. I always knew he was good, but in building out his intro, because you want to intro people correctly when they're on the pot. And sometimes the biggest enemy of a good intro is familiarity. Like, I know Matt Matava so well.

I never paid attention to his titles. and never paid attention to his track record. He can put anything in pro football or pro sports from an injury perspective into context. And right now, I think this is a year that you're going to need context. The CBA changes, and every time it changes, things get easier for players. Offseason gets different. There's less contact. every time they sign one from now until they say no more football,

there are going to be changes. And it's going to get a little less of a grind for players. And you got the old guard in the NFL that thinks, well, that's why there's a rise in injuries. That's why we're seeing so many injuries, et cetera. I don't know where I land on that. You can point to any number of things that could certainly be a contributing factor, but it's also what are guys doing with their time.

That's what we're talking about. Like new CBA is when you say, you know, offseason is X amount shorter. That means players are left to their own devices longer. That means they can be home with their families and whatever town they choose to train in, whether they're at a place in South Florida, it's like a speed school, whether in L.A., New York,

or like me, I used to train on my own. In Charlottesville and Montana, I didn't like to go these crowded places, and I had my routine and I got my zone my own way. Every CBA, players are going to be given more time, to themselves in the off season, not every pro player is responsible enough to handle that. That's definitely a privilege.

I think it's a privilege that players deserve and they've collectively bargained for better and better situations when it comes to that. But not every player is the grind or not every player is going to be the self-starter. And every CBA, it's going to be more and more of a challenge to pinpoint what players are doing the off season.

But they have a ton of resources. Another problem there is, though, there's a ton of choice and players get trained in all different ways. It could be on the same program or the same expectation from an organization or a team. And you've got guys that have trained a combined on a 53-man roster, maybe 40 different places and subsequently 30 different programs. Not everybody takes the sheets of paper home that your strength coach gives you the last day of school. When you shuffle out of the building and you're thinking, I just need to get the fuck out of here.

It's January, whatever. what am I going to do with this big thing? I'm not going to look at this packet until, you know, May. Some guys feel that way right until they go back. Can't trust every player. And this year was unprecedented. There are going to be a lot of injuries. It's happened already in NFL training camps.

It seems like a ton of guys just like every year are limping into training camp already. And they've been away from their trainers. you know, like not everybody has, has had rehab care like they usually would. So it's going to be a weird year. And, you know, a guy like Matt Matava, my old team doc in St. Louis for the Rams, can put things in context for you. And we'll also talk about, you know, the Alex Smith thing. That's really where this started for me.

The Alex Smith thing just blew my mind so much. First, I wanted to hear how he came back from this thing. Then I was like, it would be really interesting if I had. had a doctor on and talk about like the most gruesome injuries. I don't mean we'd gawk at the injuries. We would just put them in context. We would also talk about hopefully in my eyes some of the most heroic performances where guys overcame injuries or, you know, played through through pain, you know, Jack Youngblood, Willis Reed, Philip Rivers and the AFC Championship on what I heard was a torn ACL. Kurt Schilling. So knowing all that,

about this year. If you're a guy who's into fantasy sports, if you're a guy who's into gambling, if you just somebody who's watching the game and you wanna know what's going on when you see something happen. Dr. Metava already did the interview. It was pretty awesome.

You should come back. We had a great conversation and we got a mailbag for Matava. So yeah, like sometimes with a guy like Matt, you know him so well, you have them on your pod. You forget all the illustrient. you forget all the illustrious things that he's done. To me, he was just my team doc, but I found out he was in the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame inducted in 2018.

He was the president of the NFL Physicians Association a few years ago, chief of sports medicine at Wash U in St. Louis, which is a great school, and medical director of the St. Louis Blues, dealing with those high injuries, which are different than football injuries, but just really brutal as well. So guy knows this stuff. We'll get to him a minute. It was a great, great talk.

Other NFL news to run through it real quick. Oh, the Washington football team hired a black president, the first black president in NFL history, which just goes to show you. And I feel like I was pissing in the wind, trying to explain this to people that, that do not want to acknowledge a diversity issue in NFL front offices or in NFL coaching trees.

If the NFL's been around as long as it has, and we just hired our first black team president, it's kind of a fucking problem. And, you know, it's so remarkable that when you Google a story on Jason Wright, one of the biggest headlines is CNN's, and it doesn't even mention his name. It's just that big of a deal. I would love it if one day in the NFL, these hirings were so common that you could include the guy's name in the headline on CNN, which should have been included anyways.

but it was like CNN forgot that there was a person. It was just such an unprecedented thing. I know that some people are like, I just want to see the best guy I get hired. That's all I want to see. Why can't it be about that? Well, are you insinuating that there has not been a single best possible NFL team president in the history of the league in a league that's, you know, 70% African American?

Yeah, come on, man. Just acknowledge it. Let's let's get to a point. where this isn't as big a deal. But congratulations to Jason Wright. That is a big deal, especially with a team that doesn't have the best track record on race. And we're not just talking about what just transpired with Dan Snyder getting basically forced to change the name of his ball club, or at least for now, remove the name from his ball club, which, by the way, all this stuff just reinforces that carrot or stick.

Stick always works better than carrot. Because for years, Dan Snyder said, I'm never doing it. I'm never changing name of my team. Well, guess when he changed it, when he fucking had to, when people put pressure on him. Congratulations, Jason Wright. Drew Pearson, Tom Flores, finalist for the Hall of Fame.

That is awesome. We saw what a big deal that Drew Pearson thing was last year, and Tom Flores is a guy who my dad always said should be in the Hall of Fame. No question. Joe Judge is making his coaches run laps. Yeah, coaches never cared about, you know, the treatment of their players until they got to fucking run laps. And does Joe Judge have to run laughs when he fucks up? That's all I want to know.

I love Joe Judge. But I'm not a big fan of making people run laps. I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe it's fake news. So anyways, check out Dr. Matava. We're going to hit a lot of topics, but it should be a lot of fun. fun for the reasons I mentioned. And then after that, stick around for a stoned mailbag. All right. Well, this is cool, man. My old doc, Dr. Matava, Matt Matava, joining me.

Did you ever think you'd be joining me on my podcast? Is this just the highest height you could imagine? Probably the pickle of my medical career. I'm surprised. You've got a job after football, I'll be honest with you. But where are you at right now, man? I am in the bubble. I'm in the Edmonton NHL bubble. For those you have hockey fans out there, there's two bubbles. They call them the bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton. And this is where all the West Coast team or the Western Conference teams play in the NHL. It's literally a two or three block area in downtown Emmeton that has a 10 foot high channeling fence around it. You can only go to the stadium. There's three hotels. You can only walk in that area. We've been getting COVID tested

every day for the past six weeks. We do it every day here. There's a phone app we use. It has infrared sensors for our temperature with the checking with facial recognition. And so far, they have not had one positive test in any of the two bubbles. And so it's like Groundhog Day. You get up, you go to the rink, you get tested, you got to practice, you work out, you go to the gym, and then you go to the game and you go home again. Is it really different? I mean, it feels like it's the most different as far as an atmosphere is, you know,

considered. I'm looking at an empty arena, and that's different for a viewer. Like, I'm watching the NBA playoffs right now. They do a really good job of making it look like it might be in a packed house. Is it just the Stanley Cup? There's nothing like it a normal year. There's nothing like playoff hockey. And even if you say, well, I'm a hockey fan.

I like to watch on TV. There's nothing like it in person. I agree. You know, it's just something for real. And having with the Blues last year going seven games in the finals, I mean, it was really, besides taking care of you, it was. Besides being on the podcast. It was a pity of my career.

But actually, you know, when you look at highs and lows, the high would be that. The low would be when Vinatari kicked that field goal, you know, in the last second when the Rams lost to Tom Brady in 2001. That was the coming out party of Tom Brady. Yeah. You call that year of football. So it was funny. I got so many when I went to New England because I think people understood, I think it was better for people for me to go to New England than to L.A. in St. Louis. You know, like I got so many, man, I hate the Patriots, but I'm.

I'm actually going to root for you because I like you. I didn't realize when I got to St. Louis how polarizing the New England topic was. I mean, because I was just a kid when that ball was kicked through the upright. Yeah, there it is. By the way, I was wondering to tell you, I'm really happy for you that you had, you got those two Super Bowl runs. Thanks, man. You seriously deserve it.

I'm not just saying because I'm on the podcast. I just don't see you anymore. I'm really happy for it. So is my family. My kids love you. As you remember, my wife, doesn't love you so much. She loves your dad. Yeah.

He was really happy for you as well. Well, he's big in that demo. The wife demo. No, I mean, no, I appreciated the other night when I hit you up to see if you come on, actually, last night. And for those of you listening, and I talked about it, the Alex Smith thing is crazy. And I thought, who would be a guy who I know well enough to have on who actually has the pletter of NFL experience that you do? on a dime, you picked up a text and you said, I'll come on. And one of my last memories in St. Louis that was very vivid for me was spent with you

was I got IR'd one year, my seventh year, and then came back. And this was a big make or break year for me coming off an IR season. And we went to Green Bay. I get carted off. I got rolled up on by Robert Quinn. It ends up being a TIB thing. But me and you were thinking maybe it was ACL. And for me, we're sitting in that room, you know, waiting on the imaging and I'm just you and me.

And I can remember saying, Doc, I'm done if this is an ACL. I'm retiring. Like, I'm 100% on that. So thank goodness that read the way. And you were surprised when I read the way it did. Yeah, it's always hard. You know, we always say in sports medicine, it's easiest to tell the ACL tear right when it happens. And I try to be cautious when I see a player on the sideline.

and I do it a test and I know it's torn because they'll say you can't know that just by taking a two-second you know, shuff test. The reality you can because there's no muscle spasm, there's no swelling, the pain is sort of what it is, and the player doesn't really recognize the discomfort. But in your case, yeah, it was a lucky thing. You're not the first person that's ever said that this is torn or I'm done.

And a lot of times in retrospect, they say, well, you know, maybe I'll continue to try. But yeah. So you have gotten some of those ultimatums that guys just couldn't Yeah. They just don't know what to say. And, you know, there's been a lot of research coming out now in football especially. And we actually, in the NFL, we're publishing a study here soon looking at that research based on internet-based data is not very accurate. And ACLs are a big one. There's one study that showed that after, for running back from wide receivers, after they tear

the ACL, they're 30% less productive from receptions and yards gained and touchdowns. And that has financial implications for a pro player like you, because, Because if you have a general manager who knows that sort of data or assumes that, he may not sign a player or free. Right, right, right. Yeah. In the paper where the were published and based on the NFL's injury database shows that those online-based studies are erroneous, they miss about 30% of all the ACL tears alone. That's just for ACLs. And so we're trying to encourage medical journals and medical reviewers not to publish these studies based on,

We're calling them poor studies, publicly obtained orthopedic research. So the accurate is appropriate. So you can look for that in your medical journals coming out in the future. Yeah, well, I got a bunch of medical journals right here. No, it blows your mind, though, the implications of bad information financially. It's hundreds of millions of dollars for guys collectively that over a span of time, if you're getting the wrong data. And there's also like a lot of controversy over, you know, sharing that stuff that we used to put on the, I never used to put it on because I was too lazy, but the stuff that's supposed to tell you how fast you're running and that sort of thing. What is catapult?

Caterpull. Yeah. Yeah. There's like controversy over sharing that data on top speed and that sort of thing because, you know, the league would love to get their hands on that, right? Or do they have their hands on that yet? But that's part of the CBA is that big questions from an ethics standpoint, who owns that data? Is it the player? Because he did the running. Is it the teams who he plays for? There's money. You can take that data and then go to Madden or some other entity like that.

And they can extrapolate from that data what you're actually doing for a game. And there's a lot of money in it. And so the players association is fighting very hard to make sure that that data remains with the player. Yeah, because again, there's implications there as well. But as far as the Alex Smith thing, and we competed against Alex Smith a lot in division, one of my favorites, I mean, just a really classy dude, you know, team guy. And I love the fact that after like a little bit of a slow start, his career just took off. But obviously, everybody saw what happened in Washington, what feels like five years ago,

was only two, two and a half years ago or whatever it was. They were actually, they were rolling that year, relatively speaking. I think they were first in the division. He gets hurt. You know it's bad when it happens, but you never could have guessed that it would go this far. How do we get here, Doc? Well, he had this bad tibia fracture for your viewers. That's the shin bone.

Yeah. And he gave out an infection, which can occur in that bone quite frequently because the soft tissue around it, the muscle and the skin does not have a great blood supply. and so that bone can become infected when you put hardware in it. Hardware is like the plates and screws and stuff like that. And so when a bone gets infected, you need antibiotics. Part of the bone dies. The soft tissue covering around it may not live very well.

He lost bone. He had to have what's called bone transport where the bone is basically lengthened as it heals to come together. It took, I believe, 17 operations for that bone to finally bond together and for the soft tissue around it to be solid enough to be able to, you know, function with it and provide good blood supply and to rid the infection. And really, that was a real orthopedic injury. He had great care in Washington, D.C. their head team, Dr. Robin West, I know personally, she's not standing a orthopedic surgeon, but I know that they had traumatologists. Those are basically

orthopedic surgeons who do a lot of high, high injury fractures and complicated, you know, broken bones and things like that. But he's done great from it. To his credit, to his family's credit all the support. Talk about wanting to quit. I can imagine at the fifth or six operation, I'd consider doing something else. He's back at least, what looks like just closing the loop, at least to me. I don't know if anybody has any expectation that he's going to take snaps in the NFL and I don't want to be a naysayer, but you know better than me. Isn't it risky at this point, even with how far he's come to even be out there trying to dodge rushers or falling bodies? Well, you know, there's three, in medicine, sports medicine, there's three things we want to consider.

First of all, is the player at risk to himself immediately, meaning can he go out with an injury? Let's say you had a knee injury. We would never send you back out with an ACL tear because you're in risk for the damage. Number two, can he play his position? You know, he may be able to run around and throw the ball and hand off, but he can do it to the level of an NFL starting quarterback hand. That's a coaching decision. And then number three, one of the long-term health implications of the injury. Fortunately, for this particular fracture, it's not involved in a joint because if involved

the joint, then you'd be look at the long-term risk of arthritis. Yes. But to my knowledge, his injury did not involve the ankle joint or the knee joint. So really, you talk about the tibia bone itself. And as long as that's solidly healed and the soft tissue rod is in good shape, then he should really not having a significant long-term complications, assuming everything that's working well now. I'm sourcing my take on this, which is that like when you get online and you see the kind of chatter. A lot of people, the consensus is like, this is not happening, is it? Like, everybody's

excited to see him back out there, but it's that collective kind of like, cringy feeling when he takes a step or, you know, when he makes a cut, it would be nonstop. Seeing the images and maybe the images of the healing process and how mangled that leg was, I don't know if that's misleading when it comes to how functional and stable that leg is, but you can't get those pictures out of your head. Yeah, I understand. And that's part of the issue of sports medicine. But again, you know, he does have an excellent team of not only surgeons, but also therapists. He did a lot of blood full restriction therapy down in Texas with some people that devise that technique here. And, you know, as long as that bone is solidly healed, which from my information is it is,

and the soft tissue's okay, they're really, as long as he can function, running, cutting, picking, that's quickly. Then there's no reason to employ. Obviously, he's taking a risk for having further injuries, not to say he can't get it broken again. Yeah. But he could also break his other leg. He tears ACL. He can tear his rotator cuff. There's other things too. And that's how it usually goes. And I'll always remember you said this to me that same night. You said a lot of the way that it goes with guys is it's one injury. Then it's another one. And it moves on up the chain. And it's another one. It's that attrition. I mean, that's a big. deal for him to overcome and then not I mean forget the healing process and the structural aspect but like

not being mobile for two years having to relearn how to walk how to run so that's a big impediment not just the structural part which everybody immediately is like is that safe how common is that injury has that injury happened in football that you can remember where you had that bad fracture or break and then you know because of the the susceptibility to infection it goes that way. Yeah, well, Joe Thaisman had the, had the tibia fracture too. Everyone would call it that gruesome video. I don't believe he had infection, but tibia fractures in orthopedics are very common,

especially if it's an open fracture that your listeners may known to term compound fracture. Yeah. A medical term is called open or closed. This is an open fracture where the bone is open to the environment. And that's where it really is at risk. Thank God we wear socks in pro football. Yeah. I mean, like, one of the listeners asked, and you're skipping ahead, I was saving it for mailbag,

but is there anything that makes you having run out to countless injuries over the years or walked out on the ice? And kudos to you for not getting injured doing that. I mean, there's many, many trips to mid-field and center ice. Is there something that makes you queasy? Honestly, no. I don't get queasy with it. You see deformities because the stuff you see on the field or on the ice. You typically have seen many, many times in an emergency room setting or in non-pro athletic players.

And the answer is anything that really makes me queasy in that respect. The job is to acknowledge what's going on. The bigger challenge is not so much in over queasiness is trying to determine what the injury is, what the other injuries that there are that may occur, and then try to control the environment. As you know, players want to help other players get up. The player who's injured is typically in some degree. of mental shock because they usually have not been injured sniffing before. They don't know what's going on. Yeah. Control that in the situation. The biggest, the biggest example there comes with

a head and neck injury because the player wants to automatically get up. Well, if he has a cervical fracture, your job is to stabilize that. And if it's a cervical fracture, then you have to rule out that you may not have had a concussion because the two often go hand in hand. Right. That's the bigger thing as opposed to a queasiness of what's going on. There's been a lot of players that have had dislocated ankles or shoulders where you know that the best thing to do medically is immediately put it back in the place. And it's hurting a lot when it's dislocated. If you can see it and align it, you pop it in place. The pain goes away and it hurts for about a second, but then it's much better. Right. You get queasy from it because you've done it a number of times before in like an emergency room or an operating room.

I remember when Danny Himmendul did that, I mean, the way it was just. describes his car accident injury. We've actually published a study on his injury because he was, with his permission, he came back of any player and that no one, no one, I got, I call everybody knew about how quick they've had players go back. No one had the experience. He came back in five weeks, which is admirable. We got MRIs follow safe. But the collarbone on his case went backwards in relation to the sternum. And what the problem with that is, is the aorta, the vinakeva, the esophagus, all that stuff, the trache is back there. It can cause an erosion.

And so we do, this is actually a funny story. We told Kevin Demoff, the Rams general manager, well, we have to hold the collarbone, we have to pop it out in place, and Kevin hadn't eaten anything all morning. And you feel like he was a great guy. He just starts to turn a little gray, he starts a little tray.

He sort of sliding down his chair, and all of a sudden he was out for the count. No, he did not fade. Oh, he was on the floor. He had his head on the table. So Reggie and I were in the room with him. I said, call 911. Reggie calls 911.

The ambulance comes into Rams Park. They haul him. He was fine. They haul him to Missouri Baptist Hospital. He was fine. Danny just had his fucking sternum sideways or his, I don't know, all those things you mentioned that were compromised because of his clavicle sound really important.

Yeah, they were, but he hadn't eaten anything all day. And he's, the reporter's report that Kevin Demoff is going to the hospital. His wife sees it on Twitter. Doesn't know anything about it. Now, she's freaking out. Why is my hub? I mean, seriously, that's the way it went. And, uh, so.

That is unbelievable. As it turned out, it went really well. Um, we were able to really pull up back into place. We have a thing that's called an intraoperative cat scan. They can roll a cat scan machine into the operating room. It looks like a big donut and it goes on the player. It's much more accurate than an x-ray. Right.

I can confirm that the carbon was back in relation to sternum, the pressure on the aorta and vina cava was no longer a risk. You love to hear that. That's what I love to hear. The pressure on the aorta and the vina. What is it? Yeah, Vena Kava. You hear that guys? I know this stuff.

No, that's crazy. I wonder like bad signs, okay? Everybody knows that an aircast is a bad sign, right? If you're watching football, an aircast, the back brace, that sort of thing. why is an aircast such a bad sign for those of the people? Typically, if you're put an aircast on, you mean the athletic trainers and the doctors on the field know that it's either a dislocation of a joint such as the knee of the ankle or it's a fracture that you've diagnosed.

Right. And so the way, the best way to stabilize it is to put them in this inflatable cast, basically, that just keeps it still so you can transport the player into the cart. to the locker room, eventually to the hospital. Which is not always like as simple as they make it sound in the NFL. I mean, with some of these old stadiums and being far away from home, I mean, not just the trip to the ER and getting out of this stadium, but also like the plane ride back is really complicated by some NFL injuries.

Oh, yeah. First of all, these are big guys. Yeah. You know, not to mention the fact that, you know, you're cramming an entire team into a, into a non-first class. Because the first class is filled with coaches. Yeah, of course. Well, they're so tired from playing a hard game.

Yeah, that's the issue is transportation. And there's actually contingencies as to what to happen. This happens more with coaches than with players. It's like, you know, what happens if someone has a heart attack or has some sort of, you know, a medical emergency? What's the sketchiest thing to have to fly somebody back with? I mean, is concussion the biggest consideration or is there some like a blood clot or, you know, like a, a thigh bruise. Like what,

what do you guys worry about when you're flying a team cross-country back home? Cushion is certainly one of them. The vast majority of concussions do not have any sort of intercranial bleeding, which would cause a mass effect

on the brain. The biggest one of the oxygen I worry about is what's called a compartment syndrome. And you may have heard the term compartmental center. What happens is when you break your tibia, which is the most common bone,

the broken bone bleeds. The bleeding is, it can only go in so many different areas because the muscle surrounding the leg is called fascia. It's like the basically application on the sausage. And if the bleeding continues, the pressure builds up, that pressure can't be relieved. The blood flow of the muscle ceases and the muscle dies. Right. That's an orthopedic emergency.

And it's caused unbearable pain because of all this noxic muscle. And if you're in a flight, the indication for that is the treatment for that is an immediate surgery. We had basically cut the fascia, let the pressure expand, let the muscles survive. That could be a limb-threatened problem. Yeah, they'd have to land the plane over that. Yeah. I mean, that's the next worst thing to full-body cramp in the aisle of a 747. I mean...

That's a problem. You know, like, how many guys have you seen... Yeah. And I think I've talked about this on the pod before, but like, one of the most painful things that it looks like. I've never had a truly bad full body cramp, but grown men crying like baby in the aisle of an airplane with 100 people watching nowhere to go, flying cross country, it was 100 degrees wherever we are.

Say you're going from Miami to Boston or something. I'm playing for the Patriots. We play in Miami in September. Guy gets dehydrated after the game. It's one thing. It's his shoulder starts cramping or a joint doesn't cramp, but a muscle starts cramping. See, Doc, you thought you have me there. Yeah, you were in a slip.

So a muscle starts cramping and you overcompensate by trying to stretch the muscle. And then it goes from quad to hamstring. And then it's hamstring to your ass. And then your whole body is locked up. And there are people running up and down the plane to get, I mean, what are you guys getting? Ivy bags? How do you get that under control? Basically, IV bags.

And if you recall, remember, Leroy Glover for the Rams? Yeah. He had the thickest skin and the smallest caliber veins. We were trying to put veins in his scalp. we were trying to put veins in IVs in everywhere. And that's the problem because, you know, you can't often find, because first of all, the guys are moving. They're not cooperative, you know,

they don't fall to their own. No, I mean, no, it's literally, it's like they're possessed. Yeah. And, you know, the only good thing, if there's a good thing about that is it doesn't lead in long-term damage. I mean, no, it's just a bad night and you're more afraid of a full body cramp the next time probably, which isn't a good thing. What about, so you literally have to put a needle in some,

somebody's head if you can't find a vein. Well, you have to go somewhere, you know, because they can't drink the fluid. It's an electrolyte imbalance. Yeah. And so you need to get fluids back into them as any way possible. They can't really drink. They've been drinking. What happens a lot of times is their stomach is so full.

They get nausea don't want to throw up because they can't drink any longer. And that's not good when you got cramps anyways. But I remember watching Leonard Little try to take an IV for, you know, me as a rookie for minutes and minutes and, you know, like he just had tough veins, like not. everybody has the same, you know, highways to pump fluid. Yeah. Did you ever hear the story about Terry Bradshaw and Turkey Jones and how they got him home? If you ever, for those of y'all listening, and Doc hasn't seen this one, but go YouTube,

Terry Bradshaw, Turkey Jones. They sack this, listen, the fucking sack was so brutal in whatever year it was that they actually threw a flag. So you know it's bad. Heard his neck, dumped him on the top of his head. had supposedly they backboarded him. They went and got two two by fours, or maybe however many Terry needed to lay on,

and they tied him down to the two by fours and balanced him on top of the seats. So the legend has it, an entire cross-country flight. Or not cross-country, I'm embellishing. I think it was Cleveland to Pittsburgh. Things have changed. How about guys that came close to suffering a limb loss,

in the NFL, one of them being, from what I hear, one of them being, from what I hear, Teddy Bridgewater. Like, what happened there? Was he really close and how remarkable is his recovery? You know, the three injuries that get that sort of, that sort of description that fit in that category, Teddy Bridgewater, Lewis McGahey, if you remember when he played the National Championship game?

Yeah, yeah, Willis McGahey, yeah. And then those are two, those basically were needless locations. And so what happens is that the tibia bone, the shin bone, gets completely dislocated the knee from the femur bone. And what happens is the bad enough thing is that you'll tear the ACL, the PCL, all the ligaments, or at least most of the ligaments, but you can also have disruption of the artery called the popatil artery that provides bloods of the leg and foot.

You could also tear the nerves that cause motor function and sensation. And so those are the biggest risks whenever you have a dislocation. The most famous first one was Napoleon McCallum. You were probably a little kid when that was on Monday Night Football, and it was a motion plate for the Oakland Raiders. And to Teddy's credit, he's come back well. He did not have any of the significant nerve or blood vessel issues, but did have significant ligament reconstructions.

You know, this is a year until a year and a half process of rehabilitation to get over an injury like that. This is not just some quick scope. You're basically replacing ligaments. using tissue from either your knee or your knee or the other knee or from cadaver tissue. Those are called allographs that you use to reconstruct the ligaments. You have to do two things at one time. You have to provide stability of the joint so it's not unstable, but you have to provide

full range of motion so that the athlete is functional. And, you know, it's hard to balance those two things without having either stiffness or persistent laxity. I mean, he seems like a great kid and just all those. all the trials he had to go through to get back. I mean, it's great to see him starting for a team in the NFC South. I think it's one reason people kind of universally root for Teddy. I mean, not just the kind of guy people here he is,

but that sounded like quite the thing to go through. How about the micro fracture thing? Guys, you know, that's like one that every fan knows. And I'm not sure we all know, I say we because no, I don't play anymore. I'm washed up, Doc. But like, how about, about the micro fracture thing?

I'm going to say that, but since you did, we'll go with that. Yeah, there we go. How about the microfracture thing? Because it's hard to understand. It ends somebody like Greg Oden's career. And I know it's a different sport, different body, possibly a different degree of the injury. But then Jadavia and Clowney, who were just waiting for his knee to not work anymore some days.

We've been told that's probably what's going to happen since college, still getting paid. Well, presumably he's going to get paid real soon. I guess that would correct your statement a little bit on Greg Odom. The micro fracture did end his career. It's the cartilage defect that require the micro fracture that ended his career. And so just to define what a micro fracture is, it's basically taken a joint that, normally the joint is covered by carwage. It's in the knee, it's by three millimeter's thick. If you think of it as the veneer over a wooden table.

Yeah. When that veneer, the carwage is peeled off in a focal area, then what you do is take a little, it looks like an ice pick, although there's power. And you poke little holes in that bone, the bone bleeds, they're called micro fractures. That blood clot stays inside the defect where the carilage is gone, and there are cells inside the blood clot that can form scar carwage. It's not as good as normal carilage, which we call Hyland Carledge, but it's also not leaving a defect there. It looks like burn skin.

If you've ever seen someone who had sustained a burn, it looks like skin, but it's not, normal skin doesn't have the same plasticity, that sort of thing. Well, the same thing happens in the knee and joint after microfracture. We found if you look at the research of this in high-level athletes, they tend to last about five years, meaning the results are the best. After that, the microfractured carlosures deteriorate and fall off and just cannot withstand the force. So now a lot of sports medicine surgeons, good to myself. If they have a focal defect, typically will not do a micro fracture if it's on a weight-bearing surface. There's other option you do where you can take a piece of bone and cartilage from another part of the knee that doesn't need it.

That's called an oats procedure, and you basically fill in the plug, kind of like you replace the, of a putting green. That's more resilient because it's their own normal high-ling carwage attached to the bone. And so that's what's, but the reason of my people, somebody's surgeons, do the microfracture. It's very quick. It doesn't take an extra time to do it.

But unfortunately, it just cannot handle the rigors of a force of a guy like you who's going to be playing on it every week. I was so forceful, geez. I just, you know, just so it's like pistons on a Mustang. But Judeavian Clowning, who is actually that powerful. you know, he's about 30 almost, I want to say.

Is he about 30? I don't know. He's sitting there in free agency. Teams are definitely trying to make a determination. I mean, is part of the elephant in the room with him sitting around, you know, that knee? It always is. I mean, going back to the NFL combine that you had to go through, you know, where it's the most extensive medical exam, any person will ever get. You have to determine whether or not a player's ready to play now and whether or not.

not he can last the length of his contract. The goal of the combine and in these sort of contractual things from a medical perspective is not what the long term risk to his health are. It's whether or not he can function now. Right. After having an injury like that. And it's a, it's a, it's a guess. You know, it's an educated guess, but it's a guess nonetheless. And then it comes into a GM agent thing as well, you know, is it worth the money that they want to pay me. That's sort of, that's not a medical issue. Right. All right. Yeah, but there's implications, you know, to any of the information provided on that end of it like you said earlier. There's lots of players in Rams.

You know, Marshall Falk, he would flunk any preseason medical exam or combine exam based on the injuries that he had. But the Rams signed him. He's a Hall of Fame player and he's doing very well, you know. So those. Yeah, like they said, they said that, you know, McGahey is as well, who you brought up earlier, ended up having a very good career. It was just the, you know, you always wondered if that next year was,

was possible without the injury history. What about the red flag thing? Because that was actually a mailbag question. I'll get to it now. Somebody asked, what constitutes or how do you determine what a red flag is in the NFL, whether it's a trade or a free agent or a rookie? Red flag meaning don't sign this guy? Yeah.

Like, is that a pretty uniform process on the medical side? or is there variation depending on what injury and what philosophy each front office has? I think all those things hold true. You know, at the Combine, you mentioned the Combine earlier. Every team has their own grading scale. In general, they're about the same. But, you know, one team's ABC, maybe another team is grade one, two, or three. And so, you know, there's some things that, especially your free agent.

Let's say you're an older player who the team does not know, but you're coming in after your first contract, and now this is a big contract, and you have some arthritis, that's going to downgrade you much more than a player that's been on your team throughout the past five years, who you know how he's been able to manage your arthritis. You know you've seen behind the curtain. Yeah, what you can do in the waiver, what he can do on the field, what his practice regimen is, much more different information than if it's a pre-agent who you don't know anything about.

The big red flags are going to be arthritic joints. Typically, the knee is the most common. Sometimes the hip, less commonly so the shoulder. Any sort of ACL injury where the graph may not be quite what it used to be, so you may have some instability there. Any sort of significant meniscus loss, the meniscus protects you from gain arthritis. Anybody who has a knee injury that has recurrent knee swelling or does not have full range of motion, that's a big one. Because then you're going to be first from that throughout training camp. The guy will only be able to practice a couple times during the week during the season.

And coaches, they get very nervous with that sort of injury. It's amazing when I was young. I always had good knees. I mean, I had a couple, you know, knee scares and sprains or whatever you want to call them. But I always took for granted having good knees. And then late in my career when I had a couple loose bodies or like, you know, something swelling and blow up on a Wednesday, I was so frustrated. And it's just so debilitating in a sport like football. It's amazing to me, guys, that come into the league in that situation and play 10, 12 years with it.

like they deserve, there should be a Hall of Fame for guys that overcame just chronic debilitating injuries from college because that's something you don't have to think about at 23 usually. Is there a conference, you know, like Bama is one for me that I would say if a guy played five years in the NFL, well, he already played five years of Bama too. We said too in medicine too. You guys say that as well. Like if you're getting ready evaluating an SEC player, is that different than another conference? for. Well, one year we had, we had 10 Alabama players come through that had bilateral hernia

surgeries before they even graduated. I mean, it's not normal to have a 21-year-old young man have a hernia repair, much less both sides of their hernia repaired, much less that many of them. And so, you know. It's happening in one place. And I really respect the football they play. I'm sure at LSU there's, there's, you know, I don't know if they grind them as hard there, but that's a physical brand of football. It's just different. And so it's just always surprising to me when a Bama player comes out in this day and age and can be kind of injury

free for a long time. Even a guy like Dante High Tower, okay, who opted out this year, who's a tremendous football player and extremely physical and does a lot for New England. Well, I mean, he got a double, you know, and that's a lot of times the way it goes because a Bama guy's going to get the hardest look from a New England Scout, you know, in my opinion.

New England loves those type of guys because they know that they can last in New England, but the double-edged short part is they've already been through five years of New England. So it's never surprised to me when I see somebody break down a little bit from that corner of the country in college football.

How about Zach Miller? Because he almost lost his leg, did he not? Same deal. Yeah, I need his location. And there was injuries to the structures that, you know, vascular the leg. And he had, again, physicians were there. They immediately recognized it. He had immediate surgery and his leg survived. You know, that's one thing I tell people is that if you're going to have a traumatic injury,

there's no better place in this country than to be on the, than they haven't happened in NFL Stadium. Because you have on average about 31 to 32 medical people, physicians and otherwise, that are watching every play as it happens. If you got into a wreck in front of a hospital in a car wreck, you're not going to have this immediate evaluation. Plus, with NFL medical care now that has been instituted where you have sideline review of the play,

we can see the view from every different camera perspective available, even in slow motion, where we might not know when we go ask the player, where do you hurt? Is it your shoulder, is your elbow, and they're not talking? You can look at it on replay and know immediately what happened. You don't have that in real life. You don't have that anywhere. Yeah.

And so you really are, you do have the best care. Now, I've been on panel debates about with people saying, well, if the game is so dangerous that we need to have 31 doctors on the sideline, shouldn't we ban football? So, you know, I said, well, listen, you can't have it both ways. You can't have, you can't criticize the game to have medical people there to try to make it as safe as possible and then still criticize us for having too many doctors there. Another great mailbag questions just popped into my head here. somebody asked, you know, you've had a big voice in that community, is Andrew Bentley asked this question.

Shout out to Andrew Bentley. Any potential equipment or rule enhancements to reduce the risk of injuries if you were the commissioner? We know there's been about 40 rules changes, at least in the past decade, to my knowledge, that had been devoted to health and safety. You know, the kickoff return, that's one of the big ones. you know they're they're always considered other replay other um not replay other rules changes i don't know what's being considered right now but certainly the things they've done have gone a long way to help reduce the number of concussions that's the obviously that's the that's the elephant in the room in terms of the number of injuries that occur um yeah for sure for sure was there any point to us wearing knee pads i used to hate that i like because i hate it wearing my

knee pads and made me feel slow. And I swear they changed the rule back and made us like they checked us all like we were smuggling drugs outside San Diego or something like. And you got fine big for it. Do you remember a tight end actually got knocked out by somebody's knee that didn't have a knee pad? Is it that important of a pad? Well, it certainly is very important because that's a loaded weapon with Fiva flex knee and you go against the guy's head. So it's more for the recipient that blow from the knee than it is for the guy with the knee. I can't say if it's more or less, but it's also for the for the kicker or the knee guy. Yeah.

So you can break his betella. You know, the big thing that always got a lot of pushback from the players was the thigh pads. This may be in before you're. I hate those too. I used to just shave them down. So, but I got a really bad thigh bruise that one year. I got really bad thigh bruise. I mean, and that, that, but I got it with the pad in.

So sometimes you get dinged in the wrong place. It doesn't matter. Yeah. But, you know, you don't know what happened. you didn't have it at all. So that's the back. And that's the thing that, you know, I'm on the research, I'm the chair of the research innovation community in the NFL. And the biggest thing that we try to do is to try to do, we support research external to the NFL, but we also have research in the NFL because it's a, it's a microcosm of sports medicine. But you're trying to do

this in the context of a collectively bargain work environment. There's no situation like that. Well, you have, you know, you have management, you have the players. And you may have a great idea from a medical standpoint to protect the health and safety of the players, but then the players associated to say, well, wait a second now. This may affect a guy's livelihood. Well, let's slow down a little bit on the health and safety advancements. As physicians, our job is not to worry about your next contract, even though that's an important issue. Our job is to monitor your health and safety. So it's a very interesting medical ethical microcosm to be into to work in that environment. And despite that, Alan Sills, who's now the medical director of the NFL, has on a great

job of bridging those two parties, the NFL and NFL Players Association, as has Tom Mayer, who's the head doctor for the Players Association, in trying to still, you know, get as much information than they can through the NFL injury database to make rules changes, to make equipment changes, to make the game safer. Because if the game's not safe, the game won't continue. Because you're naive if you don't think that the NFL doesn't look at how many kids play little league football, because they also appeal to mothers. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, lot of activity in the NFL devoted to mothers. Why? Because mothers make the health care decisions for the family. And if mothers think that their kids are going to hurt, they play football,

they're not going to play peewee. They're not going to play high school. They don't go into college. They don't go to the NFL. So that sort of pipeline is very much pay attention to by the NFL, because it has to be. It is at the end of day on business. But there is a segment that a lot of, There's a lot of medical task force and divisions in this medical health and safety branch in the NFL that's looked out for the health and safety of these players as a number one priority. You got two more of the brutal ones before we get to the greener pastures and more positive. Non-brutal ones? Yeah, they're all bad.

But the Ronnie Lott thing, by the way, I was today old when I realized that it didn't happen, in fact, the way I grew up thinking it happened. How did you think it happens? I've seen multiple interviews with people that thought they know what happened. What did you think happened? Okay. So, listen, this is another thing about the internet here. I thought he broke it, like mangled it, and it was going to need surgery,

and they were in the middle of playoff run. So he cut it off so he could keep playing and not have to have surgery. Turns out, they actually cut that thing off in April. I've heard mixed things about the same thing. I read what you're saying about the April thing, but I also, the interview that I saw with Ronnie Lott said that it was more of what you just first mentioned. They basically bandaged the thing up so he played. They end up losing the next game, so they're out of it after that. But they cut off, they kept the bandage on for three months.

He took the banage off in April, noticed it was a stump that it was sort of grotesque. It looked good to the doctor, but it didn't look good to him, and that's where he almost passed out. So it was dealt with right then and there, to my knowledge, based on the information. I've tried to look at multiple sources because of the controversy of that. So let's say it happened in the playoffs. I mean, is that something that today they would let a guy do? Let a guy do. It depends on the stats.

Keep mind, there's some mangled fingers that we've had some players that just not so much the bone, but just the pulp of the finger hanging on. you take it off because it's not going to survive. Right. So it's a judgment call. You wouldn't, I think it's a little, it's a little blown up to think what you're going to cut it off in the train room and sew it back up and that sort of thing. If you're sure you're going to win the Super Bowl and it would actually help, like,

you're going to be a fucking legend. Just do it. What we're going to do nowadays? What we do nowadays? If you're going to be a legend, cut it off. But let me be a lot. I'd be like, yeah, but consider your legacy. If you had a mangled finger that looked like he had any certain.

sort of survival sense. You would bandage it up. You would reduce it. You would hold in places, but best possible. You've seen the war clubs we put on these guys. Oh yeah. After the game, we would have our hand surgeon. We had outstanding hand surgeon in St. Louis, Chuck Oldfarb, who dealt with you guys. There you go. Yeah, he cut a big hole in me. Yeah, that doesn't sound so good. Anyway, you'd have the hands about it. He was nice about it, Doc. Yeah. You'd have the hand surgeon evaluate the status of the finger because a lot of times you're better off cutting it off because otherwise if the joint is fractured, they're going to have a bent finger that's not going to be functional. Second of all, and the average listener doesn't know anything about this, the tendons

that make the finger flex, if they're not appropriately treated, then you can have a contracture of the main stump. And so that has to be done safely in a controlled environment. I can however thoroughly see, though, that if it happened nowadays, that that would be taken off in an operating room setting the tenens balance, the wound properly closed and under stoke conditions, and then he'd be allowed to play based on his position. If it's his throwing hand at quarterback, he's not going to play. Yeah. If it's a defensive lineman or an offensive lineman even, then there's a good chance

he will be able to play. And that's it. Drew Breed shocked me coming back as effectively as he did. I know there wasn't easy and there were hiccups along the way coming back. But I didn't think he was going to be able to keep the thing going. It kind of saved his arm a little bit late in the year. Yeah. No, he did. He's unbelievable what that shoulder of is. Yeah. I mean, it really, it really is amazing. Was there a moment for you when you were coming up in St. Louis early on that you were like,

you saw an old NFL thing happen and you're like, whoa. I mean, this is, looking back on it, 20 plus years in St. Louis, there had to be a moment kind of at the beginning where you're like, man, this is brutal. I mean, they treated injuries different. Yeah, they did. I mean, the biggest thing that the average fan that's appreciated is the sounds on the sideline and the force of collisions occurring. And you see the guys bounce right back up. You know, just the force of a, you know, a 208-pound guy tackling a receiver who weighs 200 pounds. Oh, yeah. It's just the force. One time, you know, Stephen Jackson, who was famous for wearing dreadlocks, one guy grabbed him by the hair, tackled it, and literally pulled out about 10 dreadlocks.

they were sitting right in front of me. And that's why I said, whoa. Yeah, this is a violent game. Jason Babin pulled somebody's dreads out too. Like it's just, I remember when I got hurt the first year there, and it was 2014, and it's the first year of my life I'd had to watch football on the sideline. And I didn't realize how violent the game was

until I was standing on the sideline without the usuals that I needed to get ready for a Sunday. and without the adrenaline and without pads on, just standing there watching it like a normal person is the first day I realized. It was actually in Minnesota. I'll always remember this when Teddy Bridgewater got hit by Lamarcus Joyner, which was a borderline hit.

But if anything, very, very violent. I said to myself, this game is brutal. I never realized it. And you guys get a front row seat every week with the real implications of having to run out there. Yeah, it's true. And again, that's why we, We rehearsed things during the preseason in terms of spine boarding, we call it,

statewide the person's spine. We had heard by available. We meet with the official before the game introduce ourselves who we are. So I'll know if we run out of the field where we are. We know the opposing team's doctors and that sort of thing. I have a question for you. Would you let yourself get a son? Would you let him play?

Yeah, I probably wouldn't let him play peewee just because I don't think there's a lot to be gained. No offense to anybody who coaches in youth football or whatever. I'm sure there's a lot of good coaches. But there's also a lot of coaches that you really can't control. and on its head, I don't love the videos of kids whose helmets are bigger than their bodies running full speed into each other. I just think, you know, if it's me knowing that you're only going to pick up bad habits early, for the most part. And my kids are going to be hopefully big an athletic. I've married an athletic woman.

So I think letting Waylon and Luke wait until middle school at least would be. my move. I think you can, listen, guys get in the NFL all the time that never played a snap before from different countries and that sort of thing. If you're talented enough and you have the work ethic, you're going to make it. Your kid doesn't need to start at nine. It's easy for me to say. No, I'm glad that you say it as an ex-professional athlete who has kids because the biggest thing we're seeing now in sports medicine is considered a variant of child abuse for these kids who are made to play sports year-round by their parents and have these coaches by these,

it's big in San Luis, these select teams, they're select soccer, they're select hockey, they're select everything. You know, at the age of nine, just say you're playing on a select team,

you're really one of the best kids, you'll be the least worst kid. I mean, there's nothing at that age. What happens is these kids get burnt out mentally because they're not playing. Yeah. These same muscles that,

I mean, I can't tell you how many ACL reconstructures I've done in 10-year-olds. That was unheard of what I play. That's brutal. Yeah. And then redos when they're 13 to 15. You know, when I was a kid, when I was your dad's about your dad's age, you played football or sock in the fall. You played basketball. You wrestled in the winter. And you played track or baseball in the summer. You made different friends, you used different skills sets. You let certain muscles rest from certain activities. And like you said, if you have talent, you'll be seen. You'll be scouting. You will be found. But these parents are being told that if they want to have their kid, get an NFL contract or an NBA or an HL, or they want to get division one scholarship. you got to play on my team. What they're not remembering is the fact that these coaches who run these leagues and organizations, they're being paid to do this. And so they're planning to seeing the parents' minds.

And if they don't join on their team, they're not going to have a chance. And they say, well, it's a kid's choice. Well, your kid may want dessert for dinner every day too. Doesn't mean you have to get it. Right. Exactly. So it's a way. It's quite dumb. There's a ton of research coming out now about how the injury risk is so prevalent in kids that play one sport all year round. Yeah, I mean, listen, I played four sports growing up, and I was a very saved for two plays in my career, two fucking plays, a durable player. I never missed the game based on anything else. College, same thing. And I played four different sports growing up, lacrosse, baseball, basketball, and football. And I'll encourage the same thing in my kids.

And I just don't think it's healthy from your, you know, the point you made, it's just crazy that kids are kind of forced or encouraged to play these sports where they're having to see you to get their knee cut into it 10 years old and again at 13 I don't know um how about the ACL thing is it is there a predictor when you look at somebody because I was always paranoid about you know knee injuries and you could see some guys running around that you're like uh he's knock knee or he's bow legged or he looks stiff is there one thing you guys look for evaluating guy when it comes to the laxity of his you know ACL yeah no that's good question um it comes up a lot in girls because girls up to eight times more commonly injured in ACLs and boys are. But for the purposes of males and

football and whatnot, there's been a lot of research that showed both sides. It shows that if you have increased lax in your knees, you have a higher risk of injury. There's other studies that show that if you have increased stiffness, there's an increased risk. So none of that has panned out. There's lots of research looking at the shape of your pelvis and the orientation of your knees. In hockey, there's been an association for goaltenders that if they have decreased rotation of their hips, they have a higher injury risk of ACL tears because if your hip is less mobile, then the force gets transmitted to your knee and the ACL is what goes. So there's these interesting associations, but there's nothing in rock style that says

this is the one predictor of ACL tears and a person. And really why girls seem to be more commonly injured than boys are is when a force is applied to the shin bone, the tibia that drives the leg forward, boys reflexively fire their hamstrings to pull the shin back. Girls, what they do is they reflexively fire their quad muscle, which pulls it further forward, which then does in the ACL. And so it's neuromuscular firing patterns between boys and girls that seems to be the main differences of why girls are so much more injured. But keep mind football, the most common injury, ACL injury and non-football athletes is the non-contact tears in football. There's a lot of contact tears too. When guys go

at your knee and that sort of thing. And if you recall, you know, your coach, Bill Belichick, he was concerned when all the concussion new rules were coming out, that guys were, their knees would be taken out because of that. But that assumption didn't ever pan out based on the injury data collected by the NFL. I should say before people say, well, the NFL collects their injury data that's going to be a biased collection. It's actually run by a third party. health information company called IQVIA. It's the largest epidemiological company in the world that monitors high, high level injury data for like pharmaceutical companies, cancer protocol, research protocols,

that sort of thing. They're the ones who manage the entire database. So it's not handpicked by the NFL in any way. There you go. What about this reminds me of a mailback question. J. Volk 24. Why do all college linemen wear massive knee braces, but. so few in the NFL. And I guess I would piggyback on that and say, are they effective in

keeping people from tearing their ACLs? Yeah, that's a good question. It's all driven by coaches. Coaches at the collegiate level make their linemen wear them, because you typically will see them on both left and right knees on all the offensive linemen. And so what happens is simply at the D1 level. I take care of Washington University in San Luis. They're a division three program. They just want to have the budget to put all their linemen in knee braces. Because these are customized braces. They cost anywhere from $600 to $1,000 each. So it's an expense. And a lot of guys, when they come in the NFL, they keep wearing them.

Some guys don't just because they don't like what it does to them. There's been a lot of conflicting data whether or not it's really helpful or not. They probably help MCL sprains. That's the most common ligament that's injured knee, not the ACL. But there's also some evidence that shows that because your knee is stiffer, that your ankle is at more at risk. And so, again, the forces just transmitted to the adjacent. Damn, Doc, where were you in New England when they used to make us wear them every day in camp and in practice? I hated wearing those things.

I was like, watch, I'm going to tear my ACL anyway. Somebody's a roll up on me. I've seen it happen 100 times in practice. Knee braces don't save you in every situation. So you mentioned the non-contact stuff. Do I feel like they're on the rise? I know that some injuries in the NFL are on the rise. A lot of people point to choose surfaces, less training.

throughout the year? What do you make of that? It's a huge deal. I'm glad you brought it up. There's a lot of, there's an entire, there's a group of biomechanical engineers called, actually out of Virginia called Biocor. Yeah, there we go. They consult with the NFL.

They're outstanding biomechanical engineers that are looking at shoe flexibility. That's big injury risk for LISF rank injuries, for turf toes, that sort of thing. The shoe turf interface. there's a lot of science going in now to the to the surfaces the plane services they've been regulated much more than when you played in terms of because you could tell me tell better the most the differences in the surface between perhaps the dome and st louis and the artificial

surfaces it was it was crazy st louis's was kind of like thick if i remember correctly or was it no detroit was like concrete seattle's was different St. Louis's was different. To your point, it doesn't make sense. Why can't they get on the same page? Right, because one is outdoors, one is indoors. And so there's going to be a lot of difference in how much fill you put between the fibers. And so there's a lot of research going into that because that does, as you're saying, there is an increase in non-contact ACL tears in the NFL just because of that alone. And a lot of players keep mind that this is not some of that's known. A lot of players choose their own shoes. Unfortunately, the shoe company is very, very,

significantly in how big, for example, a size 12 shoe, you can have the same, this has been shown through research, you can take the same size 12 shoe from one brand, and their size 12 is different of another shoe within their same brand, not to mention going from one brand to another. And so it's something that has to be looked at. So now they're looking a lot more advanced ways to image the player's foot to see what his shoe size truly is. So a size 12 truly is a size 12 and not something that's an inch bigger or smaller. And so. Yeah, I mean, it's a size 12. It was really hard to, I was wearing shoes my last year. They've been discontinued for four years and I would hoard them and pay people because

shoes are just, they're so inconsistent now. I don't know. This makes sense to me that Nike's not making most of their money on football cleats. So the investment for Nike or any of these, you know, I don't want to paint every shoe company with a broad brush, but they don't put as much effort into making a great cleat at this juncture. I don't think, in my opinion, in wearing so many in the, in the, the league. You're right. And they also know that they're probably bigger than NFL. They take the

NFL's research data with sort of the grain of salt. It's like, you know, we're, we're Nike. We do our own research. You leave that to us. And so because the quality of the research has been much better come out of the NFL through Biocor. Bob Anderson, you know, is. Yeah, Bob. Bob did my ankle. Yeah, he's the foot and a hole in me. He'll have a hole in you. No, he's a foot and ankle guru in the NFL. He's a great foot and ankle doctor. He leads the foot and ankle subcommittee in the NFL's medical committee. So the NFL players, the benefit that they have that they don't probably don't know, is that there are a lot of medical experts, most of which aren't even NFL team doctors. So it's not like they're standing within that throughout the entire

country that's helping advance their health and safety. And in ACL now, that used to be, the game over for guys. And when did that stop being game over? I would say probably somewhere in the early 90s, perhaps, to mid-90s. Before that, I tore my ACL in 82. I was in a cast for three months with my knee bent to 30 degrees. That's malpractice nowadays. Now, we didn't even put a brace on anymore.

It's an outpatient surgery takes an hour to do. You're immediately moving that day. The biggest emphasis early on is to get the knee straight. My knee was at 30 degrees. Keep in mind that the hardest thing to get back after an ACL reconstruction or even surgery or of an injury is to get it straight. People think, oh, getting it bent is the hardest. Getting it straight is the harder thing. And so now it's not a game over situation.

Obviously, it can be a significant injury. It takes you a year for an NFL player to get back to play. But it doesn't phase coaches or general managers anywhere near like it used to be when your dad played, for example. What about AP coming back like he came back? Yeah, well, he's done most disservice to team doctors of anybody I can think of in sports medicine because every patient that comes into our office says, hey, why can't you get me back like Peterson did? It's like because you're not him. That's why.

Right. And so, you know, he's not the average to compare yourself to. It's great what he did, but it's again, it's not the, it's not the average. I had this visual of you and with the 30 degree cast on, they probably had you bite a towel and drink a pint of whiskey before they cut you open like it was some Civil War battle tent. Yeah. Well, back then they just pumped you with the work and they keep you sedated.

It's crazy. What about the communication part? Because an athlete I used to ask, and you know this from dealing with me. I was like, when can I be back? When can I be back? And there's two kinds of guys, either guys that are asking that way or guys that are really comfortable in the training room. How hard is it to temper expectations and how hard is it for players to understand the difference between when a doctor clears you functionally, but that doesn't mean, or structurally, that doesn't mean you're functionally ready to play football. You know, like there's a difference there.

Right. There's a difference going back to initially in rehab and then going through the rigors of game back to a competitive situation. You have to know the player. That's one of the benefits of when you're around players for a long time, like you or you kind of get to know the player. They trust you. You trust what they're telling you in that sort of situation. You got to temper in when you have agents calling you.

You have to temper in their contractual situation, which may be a little bit more esoteric for your listeners, but still affects, you know, we're telling the coaches and the player, this is one medically. I don't care about your contract, even though it's a huge thing in your mind and the GM's mind, the agent's mind,

my job is to tell you when medically you'll be able to play safely, or at least to advance to that sort of thing. You know, we always are very trying to be careful when an injury. You know, let's say you've heard this one before, you know, six to eight weeks. That's the one that's, you know, standard about the most. What I've learned over time is if there's an injury, the thing is it going to take six to eight weeks. I always tell the coach is everybody it's going to take eight weeks.

Because if it's six weeks, then the player looks like he's being aggressive to get back on the field. the trainer gets kudos because he looks like he's done a good job the doctors are pat on the back if you tell them six to eight and the coaches here six and it's eight then everyone's not doing their job coaches hear what they want to hear they want to hear exactly right and so that's sort of a little trick of the trade but anyway you know you try to you have to gauge what's first of all first and foremost what's what's in the best interest of the player how about the heroics because we let's finish on a high note here. We've been talking about all these gruesome injuries and the downsides.

There were guys that played through some tough injuries. And you look at an ACL for me. I always remember the Philip Rivers game in the AFC championship, which they lost in a low-scoring ballgame to the Patriots. But the guy did what he had to do. I guess he tore his ACL the last week to get back out there. How do some people play with torn ACL? for the listeners out there

and some obviously have to be done right away. Well, it's very hard to put it in an ACL tear. There's the medical side of things. A lot of sports medicine doctors around the country questioned how whether or not his ACL was complete torn during that injury. Yeah. Because it's hard, and I'm speaking to my own personal experience,

between the amount of swelling you have from a complete ACL tear, the loss of motion, and the instability that it causes, and you keep mind, if you tear ACL, you have about a 60% chance of tearing the meniscus. That in of itself caused a lot of pain and a lot of locking and catching. It's very hard to physically be able to do that. If he only had a partial tear, then that injury sequence wouldn't be quite as bad as what I just mentioned to allow you to do that.

But for the most part, if a player tears his ACL, he's not going to be clear to play because the risk of doing your job immediately is very, very low and your risk of long-term damage is very, very high. Well, we do know Carson Wentz played an entire drive with the torn ACL. I mean, for those, for Philly fans listening, just be thankful you got that guy. That is one tough SOB and finally came out of the game. But you couldn't tell. When you look back at the replay, it was an awkward hit there with Mark Barron and our guys. But how about Byron Lefich? That's one we all remember. Was that overblown or underappreciated? He's playing in a meaningless. It's a Mac game. No offense to the Mac. But, you know, like, are you

I don't think a kid in 2020 would play with his injury the way it was. Probably not, especially if he had a chance to make it to the NFL level. You don't want risking damage. That's for the reasons why, you know, these bowl games, you know, unless it's for the national championship, a lot of guys just choose not to play. Yeah. So, yeah, I think you're right.

I think times have changed between now and when he actually did that injury. Jack Youngblood. We know Jack Youngblood. He came out. Friend of the program. I'm also a friend of me and Dr. Matava. Also, the coolest dude that you could ever meet. That's a Hall of Famer.

I mean, just a really good dude. His whole broken leg story, how crazy was it? You know, it was true. It wasn't crazy. But I mean, how, how, just how, is it misly? Because sometimes we say you hear broken leg, like, it's not to minimize what Jack did, but like there's a range of what constitutes a,

broken leg. That's a good point that you need to have your listeners understand. The leg, anatomac speaking, goes from the knee joint down to the ankle. That's the leg. There's two bones or the tibia and the fibula. If you broke your tibia, as, you know, Thaisman did, as Alex Smith did, you can't, you physically can't walk because it's not stable. Jack Youngblood broke his fibula. That's the small bone. It only bears about 7% of the body weight when you take a step on it. But when you talk about breaking an ankle, that's what you tibbley break, and that's what he did. Now, if the fracture was not such where the bone was displaced, being separated too far, then you can theoretically continue to walk on it and to function with it.

It's very painful. And he tells the story about how he was a team captain. He wasn't going to let his team down. Yeah. They had their sights on the Super Bowl, which they ended up losing. But he did. And so if it was a non-displaced fraction, I haven't seen the x-rays, that you could theoretically, you know, function without having to have surgery for it. Obviously, you risk long term the bone not healing.

that's one thing called a delay union or a non-union, and your risk arthritis in the joint if that articular surface has stepped off because there's very little tolerance for the articular carilage of the ankle to be able to withstand that over time. The college can break down. It can become arthritic.

And a lot of that's based on your genetic predisposition. So it's all true. I think so you played several games with a broken ankle. And like I said, it was the... That's nuts. It is nuts. It's nuts anyways,

but somehow it's so funny how brutal football is that you go from, it wasn't a broken, leg, it was kind of a broken ankle as if that's any better. It's just all bad. Yeah. The Chris Sims thing. He almost, would he rupture his spleen? That's got to be as dangerous as anything. Yeah, that's a life-threatening problem. The spleen filters out your blood from impurities. It's located on the left side of it under your rib cage. And he was taking a number of hits that game. And yeah, and he ended up only bruising the ribs, but actually rupturing the spleen. And what

happens is you basically take the spleen out. You can't really sew it back together. You take it out. That's why guys can't play with mono, right? Yeah, exactly right. Because mono, your spleen is engorged with blood, basically, and it makes it at risk for rupturing if it does get hit. Yeah, had that in college. That wasn't fun. Yeah, I woke up one morning. I couldn't breathe. My uvila was the size of, I don't know, like a hot dog. And I lost about 30 pounds. over a two months span my freshman year. So yeah, it was bad. Out of sport real quick. Kurt Schilling, out of proportion or what happened there? You know, he had the periolins in his ankle. They were popping back and forth over the fibial bone, so he had them sutured in place.

You know, that's something you would do. For the most part, if you presented that injury at a medical conference, that would not be the treatment of choice. As a result, he bled through the incision and had the red bloody sock. And, you know, it's a lot of lore, but it was true. What happened was true. Probably wouldn't do it in 2020. What would you do to a football player

with Kurt Schelling's injury? I mean, I'm not, yeah. You'd basically stabilize it. You, that's what you had. Yeah, yeah. Your tenants were popping back and forth. I don't mean to share HIPAA. Yeah, no, no, no.

You had your tenants popping back and forth over the fibula. What happens is Dr. Anderson basically sutured them, or they stabilized them behind the boat. so they wouldn't become unstable. Yeah, because the thing about that was you felt for a second like you were good and then you're your, but it was like walking around was one thing, which never bothered me too much.

But it was the minute you tried to run, it felt like the tendons on the side of your ankle were flipping from the backside to the front side, backside to the front side. That's what they were doing. It's a big skiers injury. They, their ankle twisted around. And there's two tens there. There's a sheet that holds them in place. If you tear that sheath or the tenant tears a longitudinal or longitudinally, it can pop over the bone.

It's a very, it's a straightforward injury, and it's something you'd fix. But what Schilling did is they basically had the tendons sewn down where they were, and that's not the definitive preempt and fart. And that hence the bleeding because of the incision there. I should have had a bloody fucking sock. Not that anybody was watching the game that week. I think it was the Vikings. If you had the Super Bowl, it would have been good.

Plus, obviously, you would have covered up the blood. For sure. How about Willis Reed to close it out? Yeah. I mean, was that was, because that wasn't a bone. That was just soft tissue, right? Yeah, like you said, just a broken leg, it's just a broken ankle. It's just soft tissue.

Yeah, he tore his quad muscle. So, you know, he was game seven against the Lakers, Tours quad muscle. Again, you know, everyone was shocked when he came out there. I think he took a pain injection, which we would not do nowadays, most likely. This is 1970. things are a lot different than. He hobbled on the court.

What the lore is is that when he came on the court for warm-ups, both teams stopped warming up. They just stared at him walking out there. Kind of shocked. And he wasn't all that effective, but he was effective enough for the first half. He got in Will Chamberlain's face a lot, I know. The biggest thing from that,

if you've followed up for that game, Walt Frazier had the game of his life. That game had like 39 points and 19 assists, and no one recognized it because it was the Will's Reed. Golly. I'm a Knicks fan. That's, uh, I wasn't alive then, but.

Long suffering if you're a Knicks fan, I'm afraid. Yeah, it's been bad. My side team right now is on TV. You got to have a side team if you're, uh, if you're a Knicks fan. You, you deserve one. Uh, the Blazers are playing as we speak. So Doc, I really appreciate it. You've been very generous with your time.

And I know, uh, fans love to peel back the curtain a little bit. And Matt Matava has seen it all in his years in the NFL and now the NHL as well. Thanks for coming on. It's my pleasure. I really enjoy speaking with you for again. Again, congratulations on those success you had. And I wish you well in your career after football. It's going to be a long. Thank you. Thank you. And now you can say you've been on the podcast. We got your Reggie on. There you go. Oh, he's all Hollywood. He's hard not. He's still Hollywood. I saw my time for this. I saw on TV. Yeah, come on.

Starlets. Him and Byron. They got Starlets. Shout out to the Earth City crew. Everybody out there. Shout out to all our guys. the equipment room, the training room, everybody. That was such a fun place despite the losing while I was there. Matt Matava, thank you. Have a great night, brother. You too, man. Bye-bye. All right, well, green light after dark.

It is 1130 Tuesday night. And I hope you had fun listening to Dr. Matava. And we're going to transition right into a stoned mailback. Let me answer two that were, and I heard you guys like the stone. Mailbag. I like the stone mailbag, okay? I've liked the stone mailbag for a while, but we're finally on the same page, and that's all that matters. So good for me. It's good for you. Had a couple that were like personal and addressed to me dealing with the injury stuff. What was the one injury that freaked you out and that you worried about the most? This is from Colin Brassfield.

And which one couldn't you stand to look at? I think it was, it's kind of the same answer. ACLs, okay? ACLs, the injury that freaked you out the most because, especially early in your career, that was the one that worried everybody. I worried you in college. I really worried about it, like, leading up to the draft and whatnot

because I was supposed to be a high pick and an ACL, especially when I came back from my senior year, decided to kind of come back and finish it out. That could have cost me a ton of. of money. We had an insurance policy. My senior year, the last game of the year, I was playing against Virginia Tech, our rival, we went 0 for four, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. We beat you all last year. I didn't even feel it, but I supposedly, and I don't even know if this is a real thing, or they were just bullshit me or what, but they said I sprained my ACL. Now, there was a three-day period

after the tech game that I sat in my room in the dark and was just paranoid waiting for the MRI results because if I had torn my ACL, that's going to cost me a lot of money. I felt stupid coming back. Um, and, you know, secondarily, we were going to play in the illustrious Gator Bowl, which we would get our hearts broken in, uh, to the Graham Harrell led Texas Tech Red Raiders who had splits that were six feet wide splits being the offensive linemen. They would line up six feet apart. So for a pass rusher, it's kind of annoying. That means you're like 40 feet from the quarterback. And they just spread. it out and throw it quick. Anyways, I'm sitting in my room. It's dark. I'm paranoid. My

legs swollen up. I can't walk. I'm like, holy shit. I've never missed a football game in my life. I'm probably going to miss the bowl game. And this might screw my draft chances. Well, I got a call back and said, obviously what I told you earlier, that it was a sprained ACL and that the bowl game was possibility. And like a dumbass I played in a bowl game. but that was always the scary injury for any young player. Now, as you got older and stiffer, listen, white dudes in their 30s are tearing their Achilles at an alarming click. And there's no warning.

That's what a torn Achilles is just, you see it with Brandon Brooks right now, who tore one and then the other you hear about that. And a lot of times there's like no real warning, and the cleats are getting worse and worse. and I was paranoid about it the back half of my career because it felt like older dudes

with older tendons were going to just rupture them sometimes and it was eerie when you heard guys talking about their stories I remember sitting in the cold tub with the guy who was telling me about pulled it right up on his iPad and showed me when he popped his Achilles

at the last team he was at and he just went down like a sniper hit him in the back of his foot and he said he didn't really feel anything it was just a you know like he just knew what it was you could hear a pop. Guys would always say, like, I heard a pop. I heard a pop.

Like, you'd hear him down there, like, crying on the ground because, you know, maybe in college that meant, you know, less money or the end of their careers or in the pros that meant money in a contract year. Guys would be devastated. They knew they tore their Achilles or their ACL and you'd hear them on the ground. I always remember guys saying, I heard a pop, like just an eerie, eerie sound. And now in retirement, I'm petrified at the Achilles thing, man. I mean, fuck.

To come this far and me be playing some pickup basketball and pop my Achilles and have to walk around in a boot like that. Oh, brutal. I had a buddy that played in the NFL who would go unnamed. Tom Sannie, who was my college roommate at Virginia, and a tremendous, tremendous dude. Brilliant dude. Could have done any number of things, but he played tight end in the NFL. And he played cop balls from Peyton Manning and all that.

So he retires and goes to business school at Darden at UVA. And that's a tough school. Okay, so this guy can do it all. He tears his, I believe he tore his Achilles, shagging a fly ball in an intramural softball game. So that's why I would love to go play some pickup basketball. But at the most, I'm a body position guy. I'm not deeing anybody up. I'm not going up for rebounds.

I'm just a slasher that's trying to get up shots. Yeah, ACL and Achilles. M-N-L-M-I can't read this shit, dude. I say stone mailbag and some guy with a handle M-N-L-N-M. Ask me a question. I appreciate you listen to the podcast, but that handle is just inflammatory right now. I can't. how does your mind affect you when you return to play?

Well, what's more daunting trying to read your fucking Instagram handle or me returning to play after a major surgery? I think it's just barely the surgery, but only by a little bit. Yeah, shoot, it really affects your mind when you come back to play, especially abbreviated. There's injuries that they'll be okay, okay, okay, and then the fifth step you take and you never know what step it's going to be. It just feels like a lightning bolt hits you in the ankle,

like a high ankle sprain or something. You know, I played through one of those an entire year. It was my contract year in St. Louis and shot it up every week. Now, it was safe, but it was just, you know, a risk where you lose mobility. You got to play through a lot of pain. Your steps one through four would be okay some days, and then the fifth step would put you on the ground if it weren't for some of the vitamins that you would take before the game to get ready.

But even when I got back and was like fully healthy, you're still thinking about it for weeks. I mean, you still tape your foot the same way you're doing this elaborate tape job that goes like around your toe and like up the side of the calf. The minute you take that thing off for the first time, I mean, you damn near ride that tape job out the rest of the year because you're so afraid of that same feeling. You're so conditioned playing through that pain.

Another one is like if you've been on IR and like the gravity of coming back, your IR season really puts you behind the eight ball, contractually, like it did for me in St. Louis. Well, the second year you come back, you're paranoid. You start thinking about getting hurt. And I'm not saying you get afraid to hitting people or flying around. You do all that. But when you're playing a block or you're holding up a 350-pound man,

you're thinking about the guy falling on your knees or your legs. And you're like, one play can make one injury turn into a career. You know, like going from one I.R. to the second is, devastating. And guys know that when they drop back out there. So if a guy comes off, you know, I-R, albeit in a contract year, that type of thing, like, he's feeling the heat. And he's also a little bit paranoid that, you know, any play, you could go from a guy that two, three plays ago, including whatever got you in this hole, you could become a guy that's an injury liability. And maybe before that first injury, you never missed any time. And so

it really affects you mentally to get hurt in the NFL. Okay, something more fun. Favorite or best, Led Zeppelin song. That comes from Fay Anderson. Well, Fay, I'm really bad at doing favorite song things. I really am.

When it comes to bands, it's really hard to rank songs. If you love music, you might, rarely come up with a consensus best song from one of your favorite bands or or consensus top three if you're lucky that's relatively stable with the stones i have more of a top three in fact i did this playlist the other night just for the fuck of it top 15 because i couldn't do top 10 i was illustrating to somebody that the stones are better than the beetles like i found 12 Beatles songs that i

like. And that's not say I don't like the Beatles guys. I know I keep doing this, but the stones, you can do 15 and you're going to have trouble with figuring, you know, do I include the next 15? There's just, there's so many good songs. Moonlight Mile, give me shelter, wild horses. That's pretty steady when it comes to the stones. It rotates after that. Okay, with Led Zeppelin, there are songs in the mix constantly, you know, 10 years gone. on no quarter. That's the way. It's not as clear for me.

They're all interchangeable. In The Light has always been a top five Led Zeppelin song for me. But in 2018, I had to go back and look for when this was. 2018, I'm binge watching Mind Hunter. You know, these shows,

they hook you in and then they disappear for three fucking years. Maybe Mind Hunter has a new season. Maybe I missed like two seasons. I think I've watched two seasons. Okay. If there's a third, let me know. Comment, subscribe, whatever you do. They were airing the last episode and I was really zoned out enjoying the show. And there's this dramatic scene where it comes to crescendo and the season. And they put in the light on that thing so perfect. I was just

so zoned out, catching flies, looking at my laptop. And it just shot the song, catapulted it. from being a, you know, top five song to unanimous, number one. It's been there ever since. Physical graffiti, by the way, is my favorite Led Zeppelin album, and they have an elite cover art on that bad boy. And I'll be ranking album art at some point one day. So if you do it before me, because you listen to the pod, just know I'm still going to do it, even if you beat me to it.

I'll just do it a lot better. Yeah, I'll get to that. But so evidently within the light, they would avoid playing it live, somebody told me, because John Paul Jones was afraid to not be able to recreate the noises he was making on a synthesizer. It's just an amazing song. And probably 10 years gone, if not for that bridge that I really don't like in that song, It's like the best song with the worst bridge, in my opinion. Ten years gone could be number one if not for that bridge.

Rain song's there as well. Come on. Okay. Maybe I named too many. You just ask me for one. But you can't ask me about Led Zeppelin and just expect to be a one-word answer. Danny, MCVT, ask me. Thank you for coming back, by the way, Danny.

Danny's, we got to think of like a catchy way to refer to people who listen. in this pot a lot. That's what I've seen other people doing. Favorite stoned activity. Probably two things, okay? Okay, first I love going to a movie on a candy. There's nothing. And by the way, these questions don't all have to be about marijuana. I opened up my stone mailbag doesn't mean. I just want to talk about weed all day. I think you guys picture me again as this person who has a black light and a lava lamp and just Cheetos all over my

all over my flannel shirt and I don't come out of my room like I'm on the move guys I'm doing 50 different things including a stone mailbag I say that to say it's just a piece of the puzzle for me ask me about a ton of stuff don't don't just ask me about weed but Danny is a is a long time listener so

I can't say that long time listener again probably two things okay going to the movies that's number one for me. Back when you could do that, it was my favorite thing in the world to do on a candy.

I would go to the movies alone on a candy if my lovely wife would allow me. My wife has a thing where she doesn't want me to eat alone or go to the movies alone. And it's not like in a way that she... I watched Spider-Man too. You remember that?

And Paul Rudd. Yeah, it was Paul Rudd and knocked up. It's not like, you know, Meg's like, I like Spider-Man too. It's just like she would feel legitimately sad for me if I was alone in the movies. And I'm a loner that way. I would watch a movie alone. I'd go to dinner.

I'd go to dinner alone. I would drink at a bar alone. This sounds really depressing, but it's mostly just that I love the movies and I would watch a movie on the big screen at any point. And some people say movies are going to go away eventually. That would be highly depressing. Popcorn. candy, soda.

If you can get all three in your mouth at the same time, it's just, it's divine, man. You know, Dr. Pepper or like root beer, popcorn, and a milk dud. And try not to crunch that shit or chew that shit really loud.

You know, try not to take loud-ass sips of your drink, like waiting for the shooting parts. You know, just biting your time. You take one huge handful of popcorn. and then you try to chew it. And then the shooting part ends.

And you just have popcorn in your mouth during the quiet dramatic scene for like a minute and a half. That's the struggle I miss. And then they started bringing, you know, gourmet meals into theaters. Strange times, man. That becomes a problem when I sneak a meal myself

into the theater. Then I have to think about, do I want to just order a steak or bring a steak in a zip-ploc bag. I'm just joking. But I do smuggle food into movie theaters. I don't know where you guys are on that.

The worst I probably ever did was bring some pasta into the movie theater. But it was one of those theaters where you could buy the food there. So I was eating. I was just my own shit, you know, my own pasta. When the lights come on, though, and you've got a big, a bunch of trash that obviously didn't come from the theater. I would bring candy all the time. Candy, whatever.

Because a lot of the candy sometimes isn't so great at a movie theater. Maybe they don't have the stuff. Maybe they don't have the stuff that wet your whistle. What do you do then? That's like, that's why I'm like, yeah, Meg, sure. You can come with me to the movies and bring your huge purse. I'm just joking. I love going to the movies with my wife.

and I do miss going to the movies with my wife. We'll go to the movie soon, baby. You don't listen to this shit anyways. Come on. Who am I kidding? My wife's extremely busy. Why would she listen to this pod? Anyways, when the movies come back, I will sneak food in.

Again, I'm not above that. And when you stand up and you got a bunch of trash that obviously didn't come from the movie theater, you feel like you have a spotlight on you. Like just everybody's staring at you. Especially if you're baked, you're like, let me just sneak out of this theater as inconspicuously as I can. Then you drop like your Kentucky fried chicken bucket. People are just like, what the fuck? Did that guy just bring Kentucky fried chicken in the theater?

And I would never. But you can imagine if I did. Never done it. Gosh, the question was about getting high and going to the movies. I love movies. I miss him so much. I miss that roller coaster ride at the beginning of the movie where they're like, buckle in and it's like Carmike theaters, if you're from where I'm from,

and they take you on this weak-ass virtual reality rollercoaster ride. And then they tell you turn your cell phones off. And I miss all that stuff. I don't think they do the Carmike thing anymore, though. Listen, movies that I remember, I jotted these down, um, that I really enjoyed going to see in that state. Blade Runner, the new one,

the one with Ryan Gosling. I mean, not to mention drive. I mean, come on, drive's one of my favorite movies of all time. And that, that was a treat. Uh, guy doesn't have a name, the whole movie. Just driver. I mean, that's his name. There's no, the character does not have a name.

You get the picture. interstellar any sci-fi movie okay my allergies were acting up in interstellar like a motherfucker that day i don't know what it was but i was uh get a little misty in there uh revenant okay i've talked about the revenant before on this pod the fact that i thought the first time i went i was so mystified by that first river battle scene that i thought it was and it was slightly in slow motion for a portion, I thought the scene was 20 minutes long. I told everybody that he said, how's the revenant? You got to see this 20 minute long slow motion scene at the beginning of the

revenant. I go back a second time, scene's not really in slow motion. Like not for very long at all. It was a great scene. I still love it, even at full speed, but it's better in slow motion. I laughed so much at three billboards, but I laughed at it like it was a comedy. I fucking can't stand that movie. I remember my lovely wife

nudging me and being like, I understand, but we got to get through the movie. Some people in here might like the movie. So I'd save my laughter for a part that was intentionally funny and just burst out as if I thought it was funny. But the funniest movie of all time that I was convinced was the funniest movie of all time for a night was the disaster artist.

Swore to God during that movie. It was the funny. Same thing with McGruber. I mean, the first time I saw McGruber, which is still a great, great movie in my opinion. It was a magical experience. So many laughs, so many good times. 1917, though, the night flare scene,

it's an out-of-body experience. Out-of-body experience. My jaw was stuck, like just on the floor. And the worst part was, I know everybody else liked it, but I was looking around and people didn't seem to be catching the vibe I was catching during that scene. And I was frustrated. I was like, everybody in here should be fucking just blown away. I love that scene.

I also love campfires. Okay, that was the second part. Campfires, I mean, one of my favorite things in the world, fire up a little red-headed stranger. We were just talking about that with Ken Burns. Shout out to Ken Burns. A friend of the program, okay? Just had him on. That was big, by the way, y'all.

And you guys, I got so many cool messages about like, man, that was awesome. Ken Burns fans come out of the woodwork. Everybody loves Ken. And I hope he comes back. I hope we can get him back, you know, to talk about one of his many projects coming up. Ken Burns has no demo. Everybody loves Ken Burns. Watching Ken Burns documentaries is one of my favorite things to do, Stoned.

Okay? Um, listen, campfires are awesome. Uh, the one thing about campfires is stress me out a little bit and any dude knows this. It's like an unfair, uh, pressure that you get on you as a dude when you're like, hey, I'll go, I'll go build a fire real quick. And then it's like everybody moves out to the porch to watch you. It's as stressful as like doing a 14 point turn with a bunch of people watching. I could do a list of that, things that make you feel really stressed out.

And like building a fire with people standing on the deck, like watching you struggle, questioning your manhood. By the way, I do build a solid fire. So yeah, campfires, movie theaters, rant over. We'll save the rest of these questions for another day because it is late. And I got kids, man. I just, I got kids. And the true test is.

see if my wife is listening to this pod is I could act like right now that I wake up with the kids every morning. She'll tell me if she heard that part because it's bullshit, but I do have kids. And I got to be fresh tomorrow, okay?

Appreciate you guys. And as always, thanks for listening. We'll catch you Friday. All right, y'all, take it easy.