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Will Aidan Hutchinson play in Super Bowl after leg injury? 4 doctors weigh in
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- Will Aidan Hutchinson play in Super Bowl after leg injury? 4 doctors weigh in
Will Aidan Hutchinson play in Super Bowl 2025 ? Since the breath-catching moment when the Detroit Lions star defensive lineman went down and didn't get back up during the Oct. 13 victory over the Dallas Cowboys, that's been the big question on the minds of fans.
The Detroit Free Press interviewed four metro Detroit orthopedic surgeons/sports medicine specialists who work with athletes — from those at the top of their game like Hutchinson to high school players and weekend warriors — about whether he might be able to make it onto the field Feb. 9 should his team play in the big game in New Orleans .
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Although none of them personally treated Hutchinson, they know what it takes to repair, rehabilitate and recover from an injury like his.
Their bottom line: optimism.
What happened to Aidan Hutchinson?
Cameras caught the excruciating moment when Hutchinson's lower leg snapped after it slammed into his teammate, defensive tackle Alim McNeill, as he dove toward Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott for a sack.
Hutchinson said he knew almost immediately that he'd broken his left leg. It was believed to be a season-ending injury for one of Detroit's most beloved athletes.
Aidan Hutchinson of the Detroit Lions is tended to by medical staff after injuring his leg while recording a sack on Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys in the third quarter at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024.
The suffering was written all over his face as he lay on the field. A medical team rushed to his side and stabilized his leg with an air cast before wheeling him toward a waiting ambulance.
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Hutchinson — who was a football standout at Dearborn Divine Child High School and at the University of Michigan before going to the Lions as a first-round draft pick in 2022 — told actor Taylor Lautner and his wife, Tay Lautner, on the Dec. 18 episode of "The Squeeze" podcast : "All I remember thinking is just, one, I'm not gonna be able to play in the Super Bowl. And two, this season, I was on this defensive-player-of-the-year track. Everything got ripped away from me."
Hutchinson broke the two shin bones in his lower leg, the tibia and fibula, and needed surgery to insert a metal rod to support the bones. Doctors initially estimated recovery would take four to six months.
But there was a smidgen of hope when Hutchinson was awaiting surgery at Baylor White Medical Center in Irving, Texas. His father, an emergency department physician at Corewell Health, told him there was no ligament damage, which would make his recovery a little less complicated.
Hutchinson recalled that moment in his interview with the Lautners, saying when his dad suggested: " 'You're gonna be able to come back for the Super Bowl' ... I got a little hope right there. ... That means I can attack this rehab knowing that I have a goal to get to in February to get back for the Super Bowl. And so that was very inspiring in that moment."
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Dr. Guy Ball , an orthopedic surgeon for McLaren Health Care, recalls his cellphone blowing up with messages in the moments after Hutchinson's injury.
"All of my buddies who know what I do all immediately texted me and said, 'How long is he going to be out? When's he coming back?' " Ball said. "They showed the video, and it was relatively clear that he ended up having a tibial shaft fracture. There's kind of layers to that, in terms of how you would approach it."
Dr. Guy Ball is a orthopedic surgeon for McLaren Health Care who has treated athletes like the Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, who broke his lower left leg Oct. 13, 2024, during a game against the Dallas Cowboys.
At a minimum, Ball said, it takes 12 weeks just for the break in the weight-bearing bones to heal. But when it comes to returning to high-level sports, that's another thing altogether.
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"The optimist and fan in me was like, 'Well, he could maybe come back at 12 weeks.' But then the realist in me, the surgeon, is like, 'Well, that would be the earliest somebody could come back. And it's possible, but more often, it's really like 16 to 20 or 24 weeks. They're bad injuries, but they have a really high rate of return to sport. Greater than 90% of people come back after these types of injuries, but it just takes time."
In a Dec. 9 news conference, coach Dan Campbell sparked more hope about the return of Hutchinson to postseason play, saying that although he didn't have a timeline or know how long it would take Hutchinson to fully recover: "I just would never count him out just knowing who he is. He's working. He is progressing. ... If anybody could, it's him."
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What kind of surgery did Aidan Hutchinson have?
Dr. Mark Hake , a surgeon who specializes in orthopedic trauma at Trinity Health IHA Medical Group, Orthopedics, said that with a break like Hutchinson's, surgeons would have implanted a titanium rod called an intramedullary nail that averages about 36 centimeters in length and runs from just below his knee to just above his ankle.
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"For taller people, it's going to be a longer rod," he said. Hutchinson's probably was at the larger end of the scale because he stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall.
The advantage of using the titanium rod, said Dr. Christopher Cooke , an orthopedic surgeon and chief of sports medicine at the Detroit Medical Center, is that it allows a person to bear weight on the leg almost immediately after surgery. That then reduces the risk of developing pneumonia or blood clots and can help patients recover more quickly by cutting down on muscle loss from inactivity.
"We know that if we line up the broken bones well and put a rod on both sides of the fracture and lock it with screws, you can put some, if not all, of your weight on it right away," Cooke said.
Dr. Christopher Cooke, an orthopedic surgeon, sports medicine specialist, and chief of sports medicine at the Detroit Medical Center.
"What we do is we .... make a 2- to 4-centimeter incision around the knee to get access to the top of the tibia bone. Then, once we line up the fracture site, we put in a guide wire, a series of reamers, and then a nail over it to hold the two pieces of bone together, locking it with anywhere between two to three screws above and below the fracture site."
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Generally, patients have few restrictions after surgery, Hake said.
"That means that they can sort of gauge their pain level and put weight down on the leg as they recover," he said. "For a number of other surgeries, that's not the case, and patients have to be in a wheelchair, using a walker or crutches for up to a few months after a surgery. But with this rod, full weight can be put on it right away. Now, most patients typically are not able to do that for a while because they say it just hurts too much."
Hutchinson alluded to that pain in his interview with the Lautners, saying that when he came out of surgery, he went without morphine because it made him sick to his stomach.
"The bone pain that I was dealing with ... I was literally just trying to make it to the next minute, the next hour, and literally just counting on the time," Hutchinson said. "I'll tell you what, I went from the highest functioning athlete ... in the NFL to then someone who was just trying to get through pain, and that was ... a monster in and of itself."
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Will Aidan Hutchinson return this season?
Athletes with tibia/fibula breaks need time to recover — both for the healing of soft tissue damage to the muscles and so that the bones that were fractured can knit back together, Cooke said.
"Regaining range of motion, strength, the ability to walk, then run, then play sports is what we expect," he said. "In the past, four to six months has been the normal timeline. Advances in technology, both surgically and with physical therapy, healing has slowly sped up this timeline. Some famous instances of athletes in the past allowed them to weight bear as soon as a day or two after surgery, walk a court or a field within one to two weeks of surgery. And in the literature, the earliest return to play to date is approximately 12 weeks or three months."
The average amount of time for a person to regain mobility and return to athletic activity with an injury like Hutchinson's is now about 4½ to 5 months, Cooke said.
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"If an athlete is going to return early, you'd think it'd be somebody young, somebody driven, somebody healthy, with all the resources available to him, like Aidan Hutchinson," Cooke said.
Detroit Lions Aidan Hutchinson watches play from the sidelines, during the second half at Ford Field in Detroit on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025.
Hutchinson, who is 24, likely has had the best of the best when it comes to rehabilitation, said Dr. Joseph Guettler, an orthopedic surgeon at Corewell Health. Hutchinson's therapy would have been broken down into progressive steps, with cold compression being part of the first phase, Guettler said.
Hutchinson probably used a device such as a boot, a special sleeve or a brace to provide intermittent compression and cooling to improve swelling, decrease inflammation and increase circulation to the area.
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He might also have used electrical stimulation, also known as e-stim, Guettler said.
Dr. Joseph Guettler is an orthopedic surgeon with Corewell Health.
"Little electrodes provide electric current to the muscle to get the muscles to fire," he said, "and theoretically, also to prevent atrophy. For some of the higher-level pro athletes ... there's another device that they can use to speed healing called a bone stimulator.
"Typically, in orthopedics, we use that when a fracture is not healing right or when the healing is delayed. ... They provide a small electric pulse, which theoretically aids in bone healing."
In Hutchinson's case, even if his fracture was healing properly, bone stimulation still might have been used to speed the process, along with hyperbaric oxygen treatment and cryotherapy, Guettler said.
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But even with all that, "there's going to be some atrophy no matter what," he said. "You want to prevent stiffness of the joints, especially below and above the ankle and the knee. So physical therapy in its most basic form focuses on range of motion and strengthening to counteract that."
Hutchinson would likely have used weights and resistance bands and exercised in the pool to reduce impact on his healing bones. Being submersed in water, Guettler said, takes about 90% of body weight off the joints and fractured bones.
"In the pool, you can still strengthen, increase your flexibility and certainly your endurance because as you're doing your exercises through the water, there is some resistance there," Guettler said.
Two weeks ago, Hutchinson posted a video of himself to Instagram doing just that. The underwater footage shows the lower half of his body from multiple angles as he runs. The words accompanying the video say, simply, "Making strides."
Once an athlete moves on from water workouts, the next step, Guettler said, is to start plyometric training to boost the power of his muscles.
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"It's essentially jump training, where you're really looking to work on those more explosive maneuvers ... to get him all set for what he would actually do on the field," he said. "And then the final phase would be the actual sport-specific training, which would involve running, cutting and agility on the field. And finally ... full contact, full play."
Lions 'tight-lipped' with updates on Hutchinson's recovery status
Whether Hutchinson is ready for that last step, however, is anybody's guess.
"The million-dollar question for metro Detroiters is: Does a season-ending injury mean the postseason, too?" Guettler said. "Nobody knows. ... They've been pretty tight-lipped. They want to keep the secret."
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In his conversation with the Lautners in December, Hutchinson called his lower left leg, which was newly reinforced with titanium, "indestructible."
Ball said that isn't exactly true.
"If you put too much stress through the rod that's in there, you could break the screws that hold the rod in place," Ball said.
If that happens, Hutchinson would likely need another surgery to repair it, and "you would end up having the entire recovery process delayed," he said.
The odds of that happening, however, are very slim, Cooke said. What's more likely is that Hutchinson's lower left leg would make it through a game, but he could injure another part of his body if he's not fully primed to play.
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"If his range of motion, strength, stamina and technique are not ready, you worry about things like ... his ankle, his knee, his hip, the other lower extremity trying to compensate. ... If he plants awkwardly, if he runs and stops, could he affect other pieces of soft tissue that aren't injured right now — things like meniscus, things like ligaments," Cooke said. "You wouldn't want to introduce another injury as he tries to recover from this one."
But pro athletes like Hutchinson also have a mental toughness that gives them another recovery edge.
"If, medically, he's cleared to go, I wouldn't have any worries about him just because guys like that — and especially him — are just so mentally strong that they will their bodies to do things that other people wouldn't."
If Hutchinson's bones are completely healed and there are no other complications, Ball said: "I would be shocked if he didn't try to play. ... I would think they would give him the option, and if they give him the option, I can't imagine a world in which he would say no. ... If everything went as it should or typically does, I'd be shocked if he didn't try to play."
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Ball said it's possible Hutchinson could even take the field before the Super Bowl — potentially in the NFC Championship game if the Lions beat the Commanders on Saturday.
"Everyone knows with (Hutchinson) on the field, the odds of (winning) go way up," Ball said. "So that's when the fan in us comes out and says, 'Come on! You've got to get back out there.' But would I clear somebody to return to sport at that level? Not until they were able to do everything without pain. Not until they had symmetric strength, and they had their normal speed back, things like that."
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Although it's feasible Hutchinson could make an on-field appearance before Super Bowl Sunday, even waiting until Feb. 9 to return to play would make him an outlier when it comes to recovering from this type of injury, Trinity Health's Hake said.
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"For the average patient, that would be highly, highly unusual, and certainly not what's typically expected," Hake said. "But, obviously, he's not a typical patient, and has a lot of resources and a lot of people working with him. ... The team hasn't ruled out him playing.
"At just under four months out from his surgery ... it certainly wouldn't be typical of an average person with this type of injury to be returning to such a high level of activity so soon.
Dr. Mark Hake is a surgeon with Trinity Health IHA Medical Group Orthopaedics.
"If he does make it back into a game, that would be an incredible thing just to play," Hake said. "The medical staff and surgeon who did the surgery, the trainers would deserve a lot of credit if he can play. I think that would be very impressive in and of itself."
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Cooke said the Lions appear to be deliberately coy about showing fans Hutchinson's readiness to resume play.
"We haven't seen things like him run on the field, like him go through rushing maneuvers, tackling maneuvers — and that's either because he's not ready to do it or they don't want other teams to know he can," Cooke said. "There's a bit of a gamesmanship because if you let the other teams know he might be coming back, they have to prepare for him. They have to take time away from their other studies to dedicate toward him."
Cooke doubts Hutchinson would resume play before Super Bowl Sunday.
"I don't believe it's possible for him return as early as this weekend or, hopefully, next weekend," he said. "But, obviously, if the Lions win the next two weeks, they have a Super Bowl matchup to attend to, and they have a bye week in between, which adds even more time.
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"If the Lions make the Super Bowl, I think there's a very good chance that he will warm up, he will dress, but whether he plays or not (will depend) on how his therapy goes those last couple weeks and how safely he feels returning to play."
Ball agreed.
"At 16 weeks, it's a pretty comfortable time frame to return somebody after that injury," he said. "At 12 weeks, it could be done, but it's probably just not worth it.
"Detroit winning a Super Bowl would be one of the best things to happen to the city in a really long time — but not at the expense of anything happening to one of these guys that impacts their life in a negative way."
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Contact Kristen Shamus: kshamus@freepress.com. Subscribe to the Free Press .
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Aidan Hutchinson injury can include Lions Super Bowl return, docs say
