Lots of buzz came out around draft time regarding Payton Wilson’s apparent lack of an ACL, but the Pittsburgh Steelers rookie linebacker doesn’t know where that came from.
“I don’t have a clue,” Wilson said via Steelers.com Friday when asked about reports regarding him not having an ACL. “So when I went to the [NFL Scouting] Combine, that was the first time I heard of it. I haven’t had problems with my knee since 2018. I’ve been blowing and going for a long time now with what they call a bum knee. But in my head it’s just, I mean, I’ve been playing like this for so long, like it doesn’t bother me. My knees don’t bother me and I’m not gonna have problems with them.”
Interesting that the guy who supposedly is missing an ACL doesn’t seem to know anything about it. Is that him just playing? It doesn’t seem so.
Wilson said following the report, he followed up with doctors to see if he could get to the bottom of the situation.
“I’ve talked to ’em here and they say, because I’ve had a revision on my ACL that the graph looks a little different, but I mean, I definitely have something in there,” said Wilson, who was the second of the Steelers’ two third-round picks in the 2024 NFL Draft. “I wouldn’t be able to run around and cut the way that I do or move the way that I do. So I think a lot of it’s kind of just hearsay, but at the end of the day, I’ve been playing for five or six years just perfectly fine.”
As someone who graded out with a respectable B- in human anatomy, thanks mainly to my deskmate never covering his paper, I deferred to Steelers Depot’s much smarter Dr. Melanie Friedlander to make out exactly what this all means.
In her entrance physical article for Wilson, she states that Wilson had two surgeries for his right knee. One came in 2017 for a torn ACL and a second in 2018, though it is unclear what the injury exactly was.
Since then, it’s been smooth sailing for Wilson’s knee, not having a single setback outside of a small knee tweak in 2023, which didn’t lead to him missing any time.
In fact, Friedlander seemed to raise an eyebrow at the notion that Wilson doesn’t have an ACL.
“Although the comment regarding the lack of an ACL from a single anonymous coach went viral after [Ian] Rapoport reported it during the draft, there is no way to determine the accuracy of the statement,” she wrote. “If Wilson is “missing an ACL” (which is not a medical term), it’s acquired rather than congenital.”
So after listening to Wilson explicitly say that he has “something in there’’ and Friedlander question the accuracy of the report, it seems there may be some questions on if Wilson is truly missing an ACL.
In the “worst case scenario” that he doesn’t have an ACL, at least he can look at Steelers legend Hines Ward as inspiration. He also was missing the ligament and became a Pittsburgh legend.
Oh and for what it’s worth, Friedlander has no concerns of reinjury due to the procedures Wilson had had.
