{"id":237533,"date":"2025-07-26T11:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T11:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/237533\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T11:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T11:49:10","slug":"broncos-pj-locke-should-thrive-after-spinal-fusion-surgery-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/237533\/","title":{"rendered":"Broncos’ PJ Locke should thrive after spinal fusion surgery, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

The medical self-described miracle that helped save Broncos safety P.J. Locke\u2019s career<\/a> didn\u2019t exist a few years ago.<\/p>\n

Even three states away, at the Cedars-Sanai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr. Neel Anand knows Locke and his case. He knows Locke\u2019s surgeon, Dr. Chad Prusmack, who has long served as a neurological consultant for the Denver Broncos. The spinal community is plenty small across the country. And Anand knows Locke, who came into Prusmack\u2019s office Jan. 13 for an MRI after a season of quiet pain<\/a>, \u201cabsolutely needed\u201d spinal-fusion surgery.<\/p>\n

When Locke suddenly dropped a YouTube video at the start of July that tracked his\u00a0last few months rehabbing from that spinal surgery<\/a>, his own channel expressed some doubt at his potential return<\/a>. There were \u201cno guarantees that PJ would return to play football ever again,\u201d the video\u2019s description reads. And the term \u201cspinal fusion\u201d naturally sounds a blaring alarm at any athlete\u2019s chances of recapturing full previous mobility.<\/p>\n

Take it from the Detroit Lions\u2019 Levi Onwuzurike, who laid out his return from a spinal-fusion procedure in a first-person essay a couple of years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are not a lot of guys who get this surgery and are able to come back to football,\u201d Onwuzurike wrote. \u201cI had coaches tell me they had friends get this exact surgery and not be able to return to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Denver\u2019s training camp has kicked off this week, though, Locke was back and backpedaling through team periods without any sign of a slip. Roughly six months since Prusmack had repaired his spine. That\u2019s in large part a credit to how Locke\u2019s attacked rehab, Anand affirmed. He\u2019s a grinder who\u2019s grown from an undrafted free agent with barren pockets to a crucial part of Denver\u2019s secondary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Locke\u2019s recovery is also the result of a medical advancement that Anand wants to show the public: That spinal fusion does not require as brutal a rehabilitation as previously thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s really done very well during that process, and \u2026 it\u2019s a taboo that\u2019s out there that you can\u2019t come back from spinal fusion,\u201d said Anand, the director of the Spine Center at Cedars-Sinai. \u201cI disagree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the last 20 years, surgeons have become more conscious of how to conserve spinal angulation and natural motion, as California neurosurgeon Dr. Jason Liauw said.\u00a0Today, Anand explained, all spinal surgery is done with minimal invasiveness. Previously, surgeons would have to strip a patient\u2019s surrounding muscles to correct any herniation or fracture in the spine.<\/p>\n

That would\u2019ve been a \u201cgame-changer\u201d for Locke, Anand said. Instead, in modern times, the Broncos safety was able to begin sequential rehab just a few weeks after the procedure.<\/p>\n

\u201cElite athletes are completely different beasts than compared to the regular, the normal person getting a spinal fusion,\u201d Liauw said. \u201cAthletes have a lot of muscular support and ligamentous support \u2026 a lot of times, they can actually recover because they have so much, like, supportive structure around their spine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Locke is now \u201chealthy,\u201d as Broncos head coach Sean Payton put it simply this week. And after evolving from a practice-squad dangler to special-teams safety to an irreplaceable piece of Denver\u2019s secondary in 2024, the Broncos need Locke to contribute again this season. Free-agent signee Talanoa Hufanga, who will likely take Locke\u2019s starting spot, has played a total of 17 games the past two seasons and is injury-prone by sheer definition<\/a>. And there\u2019s little proven depth in the room behind Locke<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The only real concern in recovery, Liauw said, was to keep a strong core to not put as much stress on individual levels of the spine. But the risk of injury, Anand said, won\u2019t be any different for Locke than it is for anyone else in a Broncos uniform.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this unexpected?\u201d Anand said of Locke\u2019s recovery. \u201cNo, no, no \u2026 I expect him to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I expect him to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The medical self-described miracle that helped save Broncos safety P.J. Locke\u2019s career didn\u2019t exist a few years ago.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2062],"tags":[232,231,258,2426,7,929,926,6,3913,1813,9,3319],"class_list":{"0":"post-237533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-broncos","8":"tag-broncos","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-denver-broncos","11":"tag-denverbroncos","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-more-broncos-news","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-p-j-locke","17":"tag-sean-payton","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-talanoa-hufanga"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114919385849819034","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}