It is believed to be one of the most extreme cases of bad luck on the football field.
The incident occurred in 2015 when Seattle Seahawks cornerback Jeremy Lane broke his left arm and tore his ACL after a hard tackle from Julian Edelman of the New England Patriots. It was indeed the perfect storm of circumstances that led to Lane getting so badly hurt. First of all, it was a "FOOSH injury", that is a fall on an outstretched hand; Lane's elbow was locked and extended, and his body was rotating as he fell, placing an inordinate amount of pressure on the forearm. Because the hand was outstretched and the elbow was straight, the impact went straight up into the arm, and the rotating movement meant that the bone was being twisted at the same time. This all caused a compound fracture of the radius and ulna, where the bone comes through the skin, increasing the risk of infection (something Lane actually experienced following his injury). ***Note to self: don't fall this way!
"Our bones are not very strong with that torsional component," reported Dr. Sutterer, a sports medicine specialist. Dr. Sutterer described Lane's accident as, "Just a terribly unlucky position for him to be in, where you could see this imperfect sum of these forces that are enough to break both of those bones. This would be almost impossible to actually replicate, it's just one of those terrible bad luck things that can happen in sports."
What made this an even unluckier day for Lane was that he also tore his ACL during the same play, something which he and his doctors didn't pick up on straight away as their focus was on the broken arm. Lane reportedly didn't realize he had this second injury until almost a month later when his leg gave way under him while he was in a grocery store.
"If we look back at the play, it's really easy to see where the ACL got injured," said Sutterer. When Edelman first came sweeping in with the tackle, hitting Lane's knee, Lane's foot was anchored on the ground. The impact from Edelman then drove the left knee inward, a set of conditions that led to a "classic contact ACL tear."
OUCH! (I'll bet Edelman didn't make Lane's Christmas card list that year ...)
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