Doctors on Gronk's injury and recovery

After the torn ACL and MCL were confirmed there were plenty of questions in the air about the recovery and how Rob Gronkowski will perform in the future. The Boston Herald spoke to medical professionals about the recovery process for Gronk and here are some of the things they had to say.

Length of recovery for ACL injuries, Dr. Courtney Dawson.

"The length of recovery really depends on the number of ligaments that are injured, if there’s other injury involving things like the meniscus and every player is going to be different as far as recovery depending on what has been injured and what needs to be done. I would say in general, these types of injuries, when the ACL needs to be reconstructed surgically, can take anywhere from nine months to a year to recover."

So 9 months to a year is the norm, but then you have guys like Adrian Peterson who come back in 6 months and have one of the best seasons ever for a running back....

Does an MCL tear affect the recovery time?

"The ACL can be torn and the certainly the MCL can be torn or stretched to some limit as well as part of the injury. It depends on the extent of the injuries throughout the knee which can only be determined sometimes at the time of surgery. It may or may not change the length of the recovery."

Will Gronk's knee be the same after this?, Dr. Ben Wedro

"The goal of the surgery and the rehab is to return him to his level of function before the injury.Some people get that and some people don’t. And you’ve got people who can never trust their knee again. It may be physically strong, but mentally they may have some issues with it. They have to get their head around trusting the knee again."

Knee injuries are very iffy and only time will tell if the Rob Gronkowski we know will be back or only a shell of his former self. He needs to rehab the hell out of it after surgery and get that thing as strong as possible. @joeloobs @PatriotsLife