Minnesota Vikings

Reports of Teddy Bridgewater missing 2017 Vikings season could be false

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 3:15 p.m. ET

Fansided, Adam Carlson/FanSided via The Viking Age

The media ran wild with reports that Teddy Bridgewater would miss the 2017 season, but is it possible reports on the Minnesota Vikings passer were false?

The Minnesota Vikings have already confirmed that the team is ready to move forward during the 2017 NFL season with Sam Bradford as their quarterback, but what about injured passer Teddy Bridgewater?

Recently, there was a report from Bleacher Report’s Jason Cole about a “source from inside the Vikings organization” who said that Bridgewater would miss the entire 2017 season while rehabilitating his devastating knee injury.

Cole also says that doctors have told the team that the shortest recovery time for this type of injury is 19 months, which (if true) would make it very unlikely for the quarterback to return at all in 2017.

However, Pro Football Talk isn’t buying this report and the Star Tribune made sure to emphasize that there is absolutely no timeline for Bridgewater’s recovery and a return during or even before the 2017 season has not been ruled out.

This is the classic case in the media of unnamed sources doing battle with each other. Head coach Mike Zimmer says not to know when Bridgewater will be ready because of the large variation in healing times with this kind of injury.

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“With this injury that he has, it’s different with everyone,” Zimmer said. “They went back and, whoever has had this injury, they’ve studied it and the ones [who] have come back and how long it’s taken to come back, how long it hasn’t come back. But they’re all different, there’s no exact injury where they’re all the same.”

Pro Football Talk went one step further, saying that their source has direct knowledge of the situation and that the report is ‘not credible’.

“A league source with direct knowledge of the situation called speculation that Bridgewater likely will miss all of 2017 not credible.”

Sadly, the offseason will lend itself to a lot of speculation and debate, and with so many news sources using unnamed sources, the information obtained sometimes may not be the most accurate.

Since it’s hard to know who to believe when it comes to the rehabilitation of Minnesota Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater and his timetable, it is best to wait for official reports with named sources for information. In the meantime, fans can continue to hope that Bridgewater has a fast and full recovery.