Report: Sharrif Floyd Unlikely to Ever Play Football Again…

Ugh.

There’s bad news and then there’s BAD news and we’ve all been waiting for the real bad news to confirm our biggest fears for weeks now, ever since Vikings defensive lineman Sharrif Floyd was reportedly struggling to overcome nerve damage that he acquired during a “routine” surgery last September that was meant to clean up his meniscus (or the area around the meniscus), it was still really hard to hear that his career is in fact (most likely) over. In today’s NFL these surgeries are relatively routine and most players will have some form of clean-up surgery before they retire, so this just goes to show you how dangerous these surgeries really can be and that if a player can avoid going under the knife they most definitely should as there is always the possibility that something terrible can happen and even with surgeons doing thousands of these procedures clearly cutting in and around nerves is a risk that should be avoided if possible. So, the news from this morning that Floyd is most likely never going to play football again is a confirmation of a concern that many of us had for awhile but it’s just really awful and sad for him and for the team.

It makes you (obviously) feel for Floyd, who is just 26 years old and not even entering his physical prime. Apparently at some point during his surgery, there was damage to the nerves that help control his quadriceps muscle, which means that basically it can’t run as the muscle isn’t firing as it normally would. While he did seem fine walking into Winter Park before the season started, when someone can’t rely on their lower leg (especially someone of his size) there’s really nothing to be done other than sit back and hope that those nerve cells will regenerate. Now, there is still a slight possibility that that may happen, but clearly, he hasn’t made the progress that he or the team had been hoping and so it’s sounding like the promising career of Floyd is over before it ever really began which has to be devastating for the guy and his teammates.

While you don’t want to blame the surgeon, it does make you wonder about what actually happened in a surgery where you’d think that the Vikings would’ve been using one of the foremost experts in the Twin Cities. It’s really just too bad and reminds you of another Vikings first-round pick that both played on the defensive line and had his career shortened because of health concerns, Kenechi Udeze. While Udeze had cancer and therefore his life was at risk it is just too similar, meanwhile guys like Carl Eller were three sheets to the wind during the second half of games and are still out there taking four to five tasers straight to the face whilst assaulting a handful of cops. Life is funny that way.

While the Vikings defensive line has rebounded from the loss of Floyd it does make you feel bad for the guy and also makes you wonder how great the defense could/would be if Floyd was on the field. He was always known for missing time due to injury and I’m sure that head coach Mike Zimmer feels bad about the way he handled Floyd’s return (or lack thereof) from surgery as he sort of called him out in the media for taking too long to return. While neither could’ve foreseen what’s happened it is probably one of the reasons that Zimmer sat down with his players at the end of the 2016 season to learn more about how he can improve as a head coach (after the whole Rhett/Riki Ellison debacle) and so hopefully if anything they could’ve used this as a learning opportunity. However, there really is no silver lining to a guy who had so much potential having his career ended at 25 because of a botched surgery and hopefully Floyd will be able to make some money from whatever hospital performed the surgery as they basically cut him down in his prime and that just sucks.

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