Ugh. I hate the pre-season, and I especially hate to see players of any level injured in a pre-season game. Ok, I hate to see players of any level injured during any game, but when the goal of the pre-season is more about evaluating unknown players in a live situation, it hurts to see solid players go down. And while Silva hasn't been over-the-top awesome, I think he HAS been solid, especially on special teams.
Today's patient: Jamie Silva
Date of injury: August 15, 2010
Nature of injury: Knee - ACL tear
Rehab process/timing: in the worst case scenario, Silva will be diagnosed with an ACL tear, which will end his season. The surgery for this injury is to graft a piece of the patellar tendon (from across the top of your knee) to replace the ACL, then to go through strength and flexibility conditioning for the next several months.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I did not see the play that resulted in the injury. Being based on the San Francisco Bay Area, I was instead subjected to flashbacks of the 1998 49ers-Colts game (a blowout in favor of the 9ers) and snippets of Jerry Rice's HoF induction speech. They didn't really care about trying to do a replay with a camera angle to show how Silva was injured.
But based on the comments as I followed the game, I can assume that he planted his right leg and was tackled from the outside, a classic MCL killer. CBS Rapid Reports referred to the injury as a sprain at first, but Bill Polian came in later to say that Silva was in a lot of pain and that he would be getting an MRI.
[UPDATE] - We now know that Silva indeed tore his ACL and will be out for the season.