Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen speaks to reporters after competing in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
A new report revealed that Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen played through an elbow injury that was worse than originally reported, leading to scrutiny from some fans over his offseason plans.
Nine days after the Bills were knocked out of the AFC playoffs on January 22, Allen participated in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in his native California rather than following through on the “rest and recovery” that he said his injured elbow needed.
“Rest? Wasn’t he just golfing? LOL Joshua please heal up,” one fan tweeted in response to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport February 12 report that Allen’s injury was “more significant that most of us knew.” “We need you at 100%.”
Others saw Allen’s decision to compete in the pro-am as evidence that his injury may not have affected him as much as Rapoport’s report seemed to imply.
“Fwiw he played golf a week later. I’m guessing it was feeling pretty good in the playoffs,” one fan tweeted.
@RapSheet @TomPelissero doesn’t look like rest to me
(Pebble Beach Pro-Am)
#goBills
Allen and partner Keith Mitchell competed together through four days of the tournament.
Josh Allen’s Golf Game Draws Criticism
The report, published February 12 by NFL Network‘s Rapoport and Tom Pelissero suggested that the elbow injury Allen suffered in a Week 9 loss to the New York Jets had a significant impact on his season, even though he avoided the worst-case scenario.
“The extent of the injury, originally reported as a UCL sprain, was worse than most knew,” they reported. “But as long as Allen avoided reinjury, which he has to this point, doctors always believed he could avoid surgery and heal up during the offseason.”
Some fans wondered why the Bills pushed Allen to play through the pain rather than give him time off during the season. The Bills lost the game immediately after Allen suffered the injury, falling to the Minnesota Vikings in overtime in Week 10, but went on to win their final seven games of the regular season and their Super Wild Card round game against the Miami Dolphins before falling to the Cincinnati Bengals in the divisional round.
Josh Allen Played Through the Pain
Allen spoke openly about his injury throughout the final half of the season, revealing in December that he received a PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection to help the healing process. Orr Limpisvasti, an orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai’s Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, told the Buffalo News that this procedure meant Allen’s injury was serious and slow-healing.
“Most people who do PRP injections for tissue, be it an ulnar collateral ligament or a tendon, are usually waiting 4-6 weeks for the tissue to really start to heal better, if it is going to heal better,” Limpisvasti said. “And then, slowly, they will ramp up their rehabilitation and activity. It’s just tricky when you’re doing something midseason with PRP. Sometimes, the player is getting back a week or two weeks later, but that would be pretty fast.”
The Bills continued to list Allen on the injury report for the remainder of the season, though he was eventually able to return to practice in full and did not miss any time.