Houston Texans Bullpen Bulletin: Demeco Ryans Injury Update
By Joe Owens
After suffering a torn Achilles in the 6th week of last years 2010 season, Captain Meco knew returning to the playing field for the Texans would be a grueling and daunting task. An uphill battle if you will. A trek Ryans was prepared to embark upon nonetheless. As if we expected anything less from Demeco. Let’s face it, Ryans didn’t just happen to fall into a team captain spot. Ryans on and off the field leadership warranted it. So for anyone to expect anything other than a 100% commitment to rehabbing by Demeco Ryans truly has no inkling of who or what kind of player Ryans truly is.
With a lot of hard work and continuous rehabbing Texans inside linebacker Demeco Ryans is still iffy for the start of the regular season. Recently this last week Ryans joined Marc and John on Houston’s SportsRadio610 Thursday morning. “I’m doing pretty good,” Ryan said. “I’ve been running pretty good… still working on some change of direction and still getting strength in my calf and foot but it’s been going really well and I haven’t had any setbacks. I think I can be pretty close once the season starts – whenever the season starts – I think I’ll be pretty close.”
While an Achilles tendon tear is no easy thing to come back from. Few athletes ever come back at full strength from such an injury. The success rate of players returning from Achilles injuries isn’t great, but linebackers and defensive ends have a better track record than offensive skill-position players of contributing at a high level after Achilles surgery.
According to research done by Science Daily. Nearly 36% of players who sustained this injury never returned to play in the NFL and the ones who were able to return were never able to return to their pre-injury levels of play.
For the sake of Wade’s new defense fans should be hoping that everything continues to go as smooth as it has up to this point for Demeco Ryans. The Texans will need their defensive field general back in pads as soon as possible if they expect to contend for a division title in 2011.