Tyler Higbee Knee Injury Reaction

Number 89 for the LA Rams, Tyler Higbee exited tonight's game with a right knee injury.

Welcome back everyone, my name is Dr. Stefan Wilson and this channel was created to help with the understanding of sports injuries.

Tyler Higbee, the Rams tight end took a pretty significant blow to the outside of his right knee tonight. Let's take a look at the replay. Here we see Higbee reaching to catch the ball when he is engaged by a Lions defender. The way the defender makes contact here places a lot of impact and stress onto Higbee's right knee. When we break down the events here we can start with Higbee planting with his right foot on the turf almost simultaneously when the defender arrives to make contact. When the contact arrives it is the left shoulder of the defender that drives into the outside of Higbee's right knee forcing his knee inwards. This inwards stress is called a valgus stress and it is something his knee joint obviously is not going to like. It reminds me somewhat of what happened to Nick Chubb earlier in the season. Your knee is a hinge joint so it is built to only move back and forth in one direction. Your knee does not like side to side movement and it also does not like any twisting movement. As we can see in the replay, there is a fair amount of side movement here as Higbee's right knee is forced inwards with that valgus stress. There are certain tough bands of tissue that hold your knee joint together and the ones that we would be most concerned with here would his MCL, ACL and possibly PCL. There also exists the possibility here of a significant bone bruise or even a fracture. The fact that Higbee's right foot is planted in the turf and doesn't really slide when the contact is made, this will only amplify the stress going through Higbee's right knee as we can see here.

I do want to mention that of course Higbee does land on his head during the play and in addition to his knee, his neck could also have been injured. His head and neck do get forced backwards a bit into extension compounded with the dynamic force of his body weight coming down on top, because you know, he is upside down at the time. But for the general purpose of this video I do want to concentrate more on his right knee.

We'll take a look at the anatomy screen here. Here is a picture of a right leg. To orient ourselves we'll look above the knee joint and we'll see the thigh bone, the femur. And we'll look below the knee and we'll see the shin bone here, the tibia. In between those bones is your actual knee joint. Like i mentioned before, a bone bruise or a fracture is possible and certainly an injury to his ligamentous soft tissue. Remember the tackle came from this side and forced his knee inwards in this direction, therefore, the majority of the stress is going to occur on the inside portion of his knee. Anytime your knee takes any kind of lateral force like this it will compromise your medial collateral ligament which is located right here, possibly your anterior cruciate ligament which is located more deep inside the knee and possibly your posterior cruciate ligament as well. The smooth cartilage inside the knee joint called the meniscus is also at risk of being damaged here as well.

Without question, at a minimum Higbee suffered a sprained in tonight's game. It's just a matter of how many different tissues were affected and exactly how significantly they were affected. Higbee will undergo some diagnostic imaging here in the near future and that will really help to determine the exact extent of his injury.

Do you think it was a dirty hit? Let me know in the comment section below.

Take care.