How is Drew Brees brushing his teeth already? A look inside the Saints QB's procedure

SmashMouth · 10-04-2019, 05:32 AM

Drew Brees hid in plain sight.

As the New Orleans Saints stretched and went through position drills Thursday, the future Hall of Fame quarterback donned his red No. 9 jersey, warming up with the other three signal callers.

As quarterbacks Teddy Bridgewater and Taysom Hill threw passes to receivers, Brees practiced handoffs and went through his progressions by himself.

He twiddled his thumb and caught balls with his left hand, then cradled them against his chest with his injured right hand. He even threw a ball left-handed.

Fifteen days after surgery, Brees is getting back to himself.

His progress isn't solely football-related. He's brushing and flossing his teeth with his right hand again, he told WWL’s Bobby Hebert on Wednesday, adding he's strong enough to grip a glass of water, too. Brees said to Zach Strief earlier this week that he’s already thrown a Nerf football at his surgeon.

“I'm not rushing back just for the sake of rushing back,” Brees told Hebert. “I'm trying to get back as quickly as I can, as healthy as I can and as effective as I can. So I'll evaluate that as I go along here.”

But Brees' speedy path to recovery isn’t unprecedented.

He owes his flossing capabilities to Arthrex’s miniscule medical device called InternalBrace. Originally developed in 2013 in Scotland to combat the ankle sprains of rugby and soccer players, the hand and wrist-specific FDA-cleared device launched in 2015.

The injury
Brees immediately knew his thumb wasn't right after his hand collided into that of Aaron Donald, the Rams defensive end and reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year.

Midway through the first quarter in Week 2, Donald rushed Brees from the right side and slammed into the quarterback’s hand just as he threw the ball toward tight end Jared Cook.

In that collision, Brees tore the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his right thumb, one of the two major ligaments supporting the thumb’s motion. The UCL is positioned on the inside of the thumb toward the index finger.

But that’s not exactly the operation Brees had.

Instead of having one anchor, the procedure Brees had uses two. One hole is drilled into the metacarpal bone and the second is drilled into the phalangeal bone on the other side of the joint. InternalBrace Anchors are placed into both holes, attaching the UCL on both sides of the joint.

Due to this technology, Brees’ career is far from over.

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