You wouldn’t know it from watching him walk, but Karl Mecklenburg has had nine surgeries on his knees.
So what’s his secret?
“I’ve had five on one and four on the other,” Mecklenburg said. “That’s why I don’t limp. They kind of balance out.”
There will come the day, though, when that changes. Mecklenburg, from the Broncos’ Ring of Fame Class of ’01, has been biding his time since 1990, when doctors told him he would need replacement surgery on his left knee.
His reaction? He strapped on the pads and played that Sunday. Seventeen years later, he feels discomfort in the knee, but not with his decision to keep playing on it until his retirement after the 1994 season.
“It’s a choice I made,” he said. “It’s part of the deal.”
For Mecklenburg and many other retired NFL players, knee-replacement surgery is as commonplace as mulligans on the golf course. For proof, check out the Broncos’ A-listers whose names surround the field at Invesco Field at Mile High. When Terrell Davis joins the Ring of Fame today, he will become at least the sixth player in the group who has undergone replacement surgery or been advised by doctors of its inevitability. The list includes Davis, Mecklenburg, Tom Jackson, John Elway, Craig Morton and Randy Gradishar.
Game takes heavy toll
Each of those players shares a common bond: Some of the most painful hits of their careers have come in retirement. And nowhere are former NFL players feeling the wear and tear of their careers more than in their knees.
Davis is 34, but he has been advised by doctors that his left knee has to be replaced.
“The doctors have said as long as I can walk and I’m pretty active, now isn’t the time,” Davis said. “I’m hoping another procedure comes out that’s much more advanced than what they have right now.”
Former Bronco Rob Lytle received an artificial left knee in January to match his artificial right shoulder.
“I couldn’t bend it,” Lytle said. “It got so bad, the doctor finally looked at me and said: ‘You’re losing bone mass, and that’s going to make the replacement more difficult.’ So I went ahead and did it.”
Joe Rizzo, like Gradishar and Jackson a linebacker on the famed “Orange Crush” defense, had his right knee replaced two years ago, helping him end a vicious cycle of anxiety attacks and painkillers.
“I’m really glad I did it,” Rizzo said. “Over the years, it just grinds away a little bit at a time until it’s just bone on bone. You see an X-ray of it and you go, ‘Whoa, that’s my knee!’ It becomes chronic pain. And after awhile, you realize the only way to stop it is to replace it.”
Advances make future brighter
Now for the good news: When it comes to long-term knee problems, there is an end in sight to the cycle. Thanks to huge medical advances in the treatment of knees, most notably arthroscopic surgery, which became commonplace in the 1980s, and microfracture surgery, developed in the 1990s, today’s athletes have it much better. If anything, the number of knee replacements figures to go down.
“It should definitely lessen,” said Dr. Ted Schlegel, the Broncos’ head team physician. “Back in the ’70s, people didn’t do ACL reconstructions. There wasn’t a way to reproduce the ligament. And at the time, they didn’t understand how important the meniscus was, so they just took it out. By taking the meniscus out, they would set (the players) up for long-term arthritis. Now it’s preferable to repair the meniscus….The analogy is a hangnail. Just because part of the nail is rough, you don’t take the whole nail out.”
Unlike years past, when knee surgery left an ugly scar, today’s reconstructions can be done with arthroscopy. And since the procedure is much less invasive, the healing process has been shortened from about 18 months to a typical target date of six months.
The NFL medical community also is armed with information on how to prevent knee injuries that doctors from the previous generation didn’t have. Case in point: AstroTurf. It was all the rage in the 1970s, but has all but disappeared after it was directly linked to knee injuries.
Improvements in shoe technology also have helped lessen the risk of knee injuries, Schlegel said. And rules changes regarding clipping and spearing were added, which further lessened the risk of knee injuries.
Add it all up and today’s typical NFL player figures to avoid the knee-replacement surgery that so many former players have had to endure. Take Javon Walker, for instance. The Broncos’ wide receiver was back on the field less than a year after blowing out his right knee in 2005, when he played for the Packers.
Broncos trainer Steve Antonopulos tended to Walker’s knee. To hear Antonopulos tell it, Walker is lucky he didn’t play in the 1970s.
“I’m not sure he would have played much longer,” Antonopulos said.
