The Chicago Bears received some good news on Monday when John Fox revealed outside linebacker/edge rusher Leonard Floyd did not suffer a torn ACL in Sunday’s loss against the Detroit Lions. Now, the proverbial other shoe has dropped with the latest update to Floyd’s knee injury.
Rich Campbell of the Chicago Tribune reports Floyd suffered sprains in his MCL and PCL, injuries to his right knee that Fox hinted would force him to miss the rest of the season.
“It’s going to be some time until he can come back, if at all the rest of the season,” Fox said. “We’ll kind of measure that as we go. But it was good to hear it wasn’t the ACL.”
Campbell writes had Floyd torn his ACL, it would have needed reconstructive surgery for repair. An ACL tear could have possibly kept Floyd off the field throughout the 2018 offseason and the recovery process could have lingered into training camp. Instead, the recovery period for the MCL and PCL sprains are expected to be shorter.
Floyd has 4-1/2 months until the team’s offseason training program begins, according to Campbell’s look at the upcoming NFL calendar. The Bears will report on April 16 if Fox is retained for a fourth season or April 2 if a new head coach is brought into Halas Hall.
No matter who is coaching Floyd in 2018, he will hope to avoid the dreaded “injury prone” tag. After all, he missed four games in 2016 and stands to miss the final six of 2017. Still, Floyd played on more than 90 percent of the team’s total defensive snaps before his knee injury this season as opposed to 49 percent in his rookie season.
If Floyd doesn’t return to the playing field in 2017, he’ll finish with 5.5 sacks, a safety, fumble recovery, two passes defended, and a 74.5 grade from Pro Football Focus that ranked him 58th among 111 qualifying edge defenders. After a slow start in which he failed to record a sack in the team’s first three games, Floyd went on a six-game tear where he recorded at least one sack in four games, which started with a take-down of Aaron Rodgers in Week 4.