Myles Jack -- Medical Recheck

Myles Jack is being called many things heading into next week’s 2016 NFL Draft, but the misinformation around his knee is getting out of hand. Let’s take a look at the facts of what’s going on.

Jack was injured midway through his junior year at UCLA, a season where he was dominating the competition and putting him in position to be a top draft pick. He then had a medial meniscus tear that was surgically repaired. This is a key term – repaired, not removed. In many meniscus tears, the doctors will simply cut off part or all of the damaged meniscus and remove it, leaving the knee without the original cushioning and stability. This isn’t the case for Jack, who had successful repair of the damaged tissue.

He’s one of the most explosive linebacker prospects in years. The former UCLA player showed in his pro day that concerns about his knee weren’t affecting his on field performance, as this video from NFL Network shows.

With that “time bomb” report coming just after Combine Medical Rechecks, Jack’s agent has been forced to address them. However, it’s not only denials from Thornton. I’ve spoken with several doctors or team officials present at the Recheck and none of them stated there was any significant problem with Jack’s knee. Two sources told me no team raised any new questions about the surgery or recovery, with one insisting Jack’s knee should be considered normal.

One of the anonymous reports says there is chronic internal damage:


Again, my sources deny this is the case. “Tests showed no current damage,” the source said of the recheck testing and imaging. “Lots of players have small pieces of bone or cartilage floating around. That’s almost normal and why so many will have [arthroscopic] clean outs in the offseason, but that was not indicated for Jack at this time.”

Comparisons made to Jonathan Vilma are troubling, as well. Vilma suffered from a condition called osteochondritis dissecans that can create pits and fragments of bone. He did have several rounds of surgery just a few years after being drafted, but had a solid career. However, there is no indication Jack has any such condition in his knee. Again, he had a small tear in his meniscus that was repaired with surgery.

Jack’s successful meniscal repair means the meniscus is largely intact. There would be little or no bone on bone contact that could lead to further damage. This isn’t uncommon and there have been very solid results from this procedure. The best known cases are Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls, who did later damage the meniscus again, requiring removal, though Rose had the complication of a previous ACL reconstruction as well; and Salvador Perez, the catcher for the Kansas City Royals, who has had no problems with his repaired knee despite years of catching.

The downside case here is Jack follows the path of Jadeveon Clowney of the Houston Texans. Clowney had to have surgery in 2014 to repair damage inside his knee as the result of meniscal damage, which included a small area of microfracture. Clowney’s rehab was extended, but he had a nice season for the Texans in ’15 with no real loss of performance.

Knee problems in the NFL are rampant and almost any player could drop on any play with a significant knee injury. Go to any reunion of players and you’ll see the characteristic hobble in many. For those that aren’t, you’ll likely see the scar of knee replacement under their trousers. It’s quite possible that Myles Jack will also have this issue, but given the current medical situation, it’s as likely he’ll be wearing a gold jacket when that happens as it is he’ll be injured early in his career.

JASON LA CANFORA



For a few hours, I'll admit, I got caught up in it, too.



As the tweets and stories were flying around about Myles Jack's supposedly jacked-up knee coming out of his medical re-check ahead of the draft, and as the chatter in the scouting community was hijacked for a period of time by how far he might fall, I fell prey to the BS floating around.



I had a few conversations with scouts and execs in which I was already operating under the assumption that Jack was going to drop. Sadly, that's how it can tend to work this time of year, where perception and reality blur and the rhetoric and smears spread rapidly. And, sometimes, for a vacuum of a few hours or so, this little gossip circles turns particularly catty.



But then you start talking to people you really know and trust, to teams that aren't going to drafting an inside linebacker high but have nonetheless done all the work on him -- and whose doctors have read all the MRIs and accrued all the pertinent medical information.



And then you take a deep breath and you take a minute to sympathize with the kid in question -- Myles Jack in this case -- and you start to curse the kind of adult, whether it be the agent for a competing linebacker or an anonymous executive who is praying the kid falls to him, who would perpetrate the idea that Jack's knee was going to implode in the next 18 months.



You find yourself hating this time of year, and this silly pre-draft process, even more than you normally do, and you start counting down the days until the draft is over.



So, here is the reality on Myles Jack, according to numerous trusted sources who, again, don't have a vested interest in this other than the fact this find it detestable the kind of medical misinformation that gets so casually spread around in a cavalier manner every April.



The timing of the UCLA linebacker's surgically repaired knee and recovery from a torn meniscus is not ideal and it something that teams are exploring and researching thoroughly, but there are no indications that it should significantly alter his draft status, according to those sources, and no concerns that he might have a truncated career because of it.



He remains one of the elite prospects in this draft, and while perhaps he ends up not going in the top five now (which was always a possibility, regardless), I didn't find a team who didn't believe he would be around outside the top 15, if not the top 10. He's still very much in consideration at the top of the draft, and while different medical teams certainly have some differing opinions about the scope of any projected recovery, the idea that Jack is now damaged good just did not jibe with anything I was hearing.



Here's one of the tweets that was floating out there about Jack:





“This Myles Jack stuff is getting blown way out of proportion,” said one NFL executive. “I checked with our medical guys, again, and this stuff just is not true. It's not something we would be worried about. Some agent or some team must be behind it. We're not taking a linebacker there (in the first round), but if we were we wouldn't have any problems taking him. We passed him without any real issues. This kid is a great player. His change of direction is awesome. This is getting totally blown out of proportion.”



Another high-ranking NFL executive: “Disgusting. There was a (different) leak last week about a top prospect and a procedure he had. The fact that the procedure happened in high school was buried in the report.”



Another personnel exec: “If you get a feel for who has killed Jack for his medical, let me know. That kid is a player. We hope he falls to us.”



Yeah, this is fairly ugly and nefarious, but unfortunately it comes with the territory. Jack's agent, John Thornton, posted some compelling video of Jack doing some fairly super-human things on Twitter.



In the end, thankfully, this won't really matter.



Smart NFL teams avoid this kind of stuff, sort through the baloney and groupthink and rely on their scout's eyes and their doctor's internal medical reports to make these decisions. Fact is, no NFL player is guaranteed a long career, many of these players have already been pushed to the limits, physically, by the college programs with no compensation and they enter the NFL with plenty of tread on their tires. If you get five quality years out of them on their rookie contracts, that's hardly the end of the world for general managers. The risks here are very real and well known.



I would not be surprised at all to see a team like Jacksonville still take Jack inside the top five. He's a proven playmaker and one of the standouts in this draft. I just hope his knee doesn't spontaneously combust as he walks across the stage to shake Roger Goodell's hand when his name is announced.