CINCINNATI — Dr. Timothy Kremchek has spent more than 25 years treating Cincinnati Reds baseball players, largely as the team's medical director, and that's given him a unique insight into major season-ending injuries like the one Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow suffered game against the Baltimore Ravens.
Kremchek said while it's unclear which tendon Burrow tore specifically, a tendon tear in the wrist is a difficult one to overcome.
He said grasping a football places great tension on all eight bones in the wrist and the tendons that connect them.
The team said Burrow suffered the injury in the first half of Thursday's game, never returning to the field after throwing a touchdown pass to Joe Mixon.
"He knew he had done something at that point," Kremchek said. "And chances are it was over in the inner aspect, or we call it the radial aspect of the wrist. There's a lot of ligaments over here."
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Kremchek said athletes often want to get the physical problem addressed as soon as possible as they're used to operating on all cylinders.
"Once they know what's wrong, they want to know how to fix it, and then they want you to fix it so it's behind them," he said. "They can think about their rehab. They can think about their recovery. They know exactly when they'll be able to start throwing, running, working out."
Beyond the physical, Kremchek said it's important for teams to recognize and care for a player's mental state.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor said Burrow is built to handle adversity during a Friday press conference.
"I think if he was a normal human being you'd worry about it. He's not. He's wired differently. He's programmed differently," he said.
Kremchek said he had confidence in Borrow to bounce back as he's fought through injury several times before.
"The poor guy has had the calf injury, the ACL, now this," he said. "He's only 26 years old. Hopefully, that's it for him and he can finish off strong, go to the Hall of Fame. Take us to a few Super Bowls."
In Kremchek's opinion, there should be no reason Burrow isn't at full strength when he is fully healthy and back on the field in 2024.
