CloakNNNdagger
Hall of Fame
I realize there are varying degrees of everything, and I will certainly defer to Cn'D on anything he may say, but I found this from last season...
LINK
I'll also throw in that Romo started one week later vs. the Redskins, and didn't miss a start all season. On the other hand, he only had one broken rib, and I haven't seen any report on Cody that didn't refer to broken ribs in the plural. And I realize there's also a difference between playing D-Line and QB.
Romo was put in 1 week following his "punctured lung." Per one of my inside sources immediately following his injury, it was revealed that he sustained a minimal pneumothorax which sealed off quickly with total reinflation within the week, this fits within the 1-2 week period in my previous post...........the 1 week minimal time out still probably not being the wisest route for a football player, but we all know that with football players, the wisest route is not all that common.
Even taking into account that Cody had ONLY sustained three fractured ribs, let's look at this situation with a little additional analytic eye. Romo is a QB.........and Cody is a DT. How often is Romo expected to be hit in the chest.......5, maybe 10 times during the game? A DT on the other hand makes his living exposing himself as a human piniata, being pushed, punched and/or piled on every single play he plays in the game. With rib fractures, it doesn't matter if you are hit from the front, the side or the back........it moves the fracture site. With single fractures, there is less likelihood of significant movement of the fracture segments as opposed to multiple fractures. Multiple rib fractures typically result in a more unstable and vulnerable chest superstructure. And the more movement of the fracture segments secondary to outer forces applied to the chest, the more likely the sharp edges of the fractured bone is to repuncture and thus recollapse the lung........usually to a subtotal to total extent which could result in an immediate life-threatening scenario.
Here is a CT scan that demonstrates a single fractured sharp edge (yellow arrow). To help orient you to what you are looking at, this is a "cut"/view that simulates the magician cutting a body in two and looking at one half from the side. On the apparent left, the mottled large area taking up most of the left side is a normal fully inflated lung. On the apparent right, the mottled area is small and collapsed (its outer border identified by the red arrows)
For those of you that are saying to yourselves, a flak jacket will protect Cody from further injury. Flak jackets work by widely distributing the force of trauma instead of allowing it to concentrate it on the fracture sites. But flak jackets do not guarantee complete protection from reinjury. And repeated impact to the chest during a game, flak jacket or not, does nothing to help the healing process and thereby can only serve to empirically impede it.