Should J.J. McCarthy have been cleared to play just days after injuring his hip? | The Injury Report

This is the Injury Report, presented by NYU Langone Health. JJ McCarthy is ready to get back on the field, but is his hip ready for another round of NFL hits? The Giants quarterback suffered a hip injury in Sunday's game against the Eagles, and now he's turning around just four days later to face Washington on Thursday night. So, how much can that hip heal in such a short time, and what are the risks of playing through the injury? To break it all down, we're joined by Dr. Daniel Kaplan, sports orthopedic surgeon with NYU Langone Health, for this edition of the Injury Report. Dr. Kaplan, how are you doing? I'm great. Thanks for having me on. Oh, always good to talk to you, sir. Dr. Kaplan, let's start with the injury itself. JJ McCarthy suffered what's called a hip pointer after taking a hard hit against the Eagles. What exactly is a hip pointer and what happens inside the body when it occurs and how serious can this type of injury be Yeah, a hip pointer is confusing because it's a crazy name. Like, what does that even mean? So a hip pointer is, it's basically a bruise of the front of what's called your pelvis or your iliac wing. So usually that's when people take a shot from a helmet or something like that, or a knee pad right in that area. So you can kind of think of it for all intents and purposes as like the worst bruise of your life. What it really is, is around our bones, bones are covered by something called periosteum. It just means some of the soft tissue around it. And even if the bone doesn't break. The tissue around it can be injured and bleed and cause pain. So that's really at its heart what a hip pointer is, contusion or hit to some of that soft tissue around the bone. Okay, feel that he'll be able to play through it. And this brings us to the next thing, because one of the biggest factors here is turnaround. McCarthy suffered this injury on Sunday and is preparing to play just four days later against Washington. How much does that shortened recovery window matter with a hip pointer? And what's happening? As you mentioned, inside the inside injured area during those first couple of days is the players trying to recover. Yeah, so, I mean, the normal timeline, like, if you were to look up online, it's probably, like, one to three weeks, probably closer to the one-week side, but typically longer than four days. You know, he's got a short week. We're unlucky with that with the Thursday night game. Again, it is doable because the injury is safe. It's really a player comfort and pain thing. So it's not that he won't be able to physically do some of those things, but he, you know, he has less time for that inflammation and blood to go down. He will be in more pain than if he was able to give it a few more days to cool off. So what the body is doing is it's helping dissipate or reduce the amount of inflammation and some of even that blood in that area. That way he can get back to feeling the way he would. A few more days would be, let's say, advantageous. But if he feels up to it and he has a great medical staff that feel like he's up to it, then I'm sure he is.