Another high ankle sprain

I like to blog about ankle injuries, since this is my primary research interest, and have blogged in the past about high ankle sprains. Well, another happened this weekend, this time to New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. After catching a pass in the 3rd quarter, he was tackled from behind, and the defender landed on his lower leg, forcing his ankle into hyper dorsiflexion and eversion. You can see the video here. Many times lineman suffer high ankle sprains when their lower leg gets hit from behind during a pile up, but this injury happened in the open field. Both of these players had a lot of momentum (which is the product of mass and velocity) and when Gronkowski was hit from behind, much of the defender's momentum was transferred to his lower leg, causing the hyper dorsiflexion and eversion. This mechanism of injury will stretch or possibly tear the ligaments above the ankle that help hold the tibia and fibula together. The good news for Gronkowski is that there is two weeks before the Super Bowl. The bad news is that high ankle sprains have a slow rate of healing, due to the mechanism of injury and because when he does return to practice, he will place stress on the joint. My best guess is that he will be able to play but will be limited due to the injury.