can you explain what is happening with these shoulder sprains we’re having at QB?

Humor me a little…

With your first 2 fingers, follow your collarbone along it’s length towards your shoulder – it hooks slightly backwards near the end…Feel that soft spot right there? That’s the A/C (acromial-clavicular) joint. Thats the point where your clavicle & shoulder blade meet; and they’re held together by a ligament about the width one of your fingers; and approximately an inch in length.

Now imagine a skeleton – see the collarbone, shoulder blade and humerous…they form the shoulder joint…

All the muscles, nerves and blood vessels in your shoulder going to your arm run through, over or under the A/C joint. The biceps, deltoids, pectoralis, rotator cuff, brachial artery & brachial nerve are all involved here…

Now put yourself in the throwing position. (arm extended, rotated, elbow flexed)…Where’d that little space go?

The most common mechanism of traumatic injury to the A/C joint is: arm extended & rotated – and getting hit from underneath (imagine being sacked mid-throw). Everything is compressed, flexed – and now your humerous has just been thrust upwards into that space; something’s gotta give…

2nd most popular method of injury is chronic overuse. What does a QB do all day at practice? At the gym? In a game? Those muscles get inflamed & irritated – and there’s little space for swelling to occur. All it takes is one bad throw – if you’ve ever thrown something hard – so you feel that “tweak” in your soulder – now go out and throw, throw, throw, throw…Something up in there isn’t happy, and if you keep expecting to “play through the pain” you open yourself up to greater injury.

By the way…If you’ve ever torn that ligament – your shoulder joint will look like a sweater that was hung to dry on a wire hanger (it sticks up a little right there). That little ligament is no longer holding the clavicle down, letting it rise up so there’s just muscle & fascia tissue to hold it down, now. Once it’s gone, it’s gone (without surgical intervention). (Fascia tissue? You know that bluish tough stuff in the middle of your steak on occaision? That’s fascia tissue. It’s basically a muscle covering.)

that is the explanation I needed.

So, given when these injuries are occurring with our QBs, I’m guessing both McGee and Johnson substained their injuries by being hit in the act of passing or being sacked.