Ouch! Cowboys QB Dak Reveals He Tried To Re-Set Broken Ankle Himself
FRISCO - Dak Prescott is about ready to "do everything'' at Dallas Cowboys training camp - and is telling the story of how on that fateful day of Week 5 of the 2020 NFL season, "doing everything'' included trying to serve as his own doctor.
“Yeah, so ... I thought (his ankle) was just rolled, and as I grabbed it and did that I just was like, ‘I need to get off the field,'” Prescott explained. “So, I was trying to set it back myself. I was trying to hit it into the ground.''
Wait. What?
"I was trying to get off the field, and I knew it wasn’t straight,'' the Cowboys QB tells ESPN’s Up Close with Sage Steele. "So I wanted to do that so I could get up and when I couldn’t that’s when I just waved (to the sideline), ‘I can’t do this myself.’ They came over, they put it back in place and that was a relief, right?
"You can imagine the pain it was in and then it gets reset. I just remember over and over just saying, ‘Thank God.'”
Yes, we can imagine the pain. We can also imagine more pain when one tries to push broken bones back into place even as they are protruding from the skin.
Prescott sustained a compound fracture and dislocation to his right ankle, which required two surgeries. Prescott, who has discussed openly bouts of depression during down times like this, conceded to being frustrated after learning he needed a second procedure.
“The only time I can say that I was like, man, was when I had to get a second surgery,” Prescott noted. “And that was just because I had gotten my foot back on the ground for about a week or so, and I didn’t necessarily know after my leg was facing another way how it was supposed to feel but it didn’t feel great the first couple of days walking.
"Obviously, thankful for good doctors and people and medics to just know that we needed to go do more work on it and get it right.”
That suggests that the second surgery wasn't quite as "planned'' as the Cowboys and Dak's camp led on at the time. But regardless, the Cowboys quarterback is ready to move on to talking - and playing football.
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“I’ve buried the injury,” Prescott said to the DFW media recently. “Honestly, guys, you know me, from the point of practice, from the point of just moving forward and going about my life, I’ve buried it mentally. And I think you guys and a lot of people around have to help me in burying it as well as we move forward.”
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Prescott is expected to participate in training camp starting on Day 1 - the Cowboys depart DFW for Oxnard on July 20 - and all indications are the team leader, freshly paid with a new four-year, $160 million contract - further "bury the injury'' ... but maybe not the grotesque memories of trying to push it all back into place.
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