FOXBORO -- Walked like a lie, talked like a lie, smelled like a lie. But as it turns out, it wasn't really a lie.
While Rosevelt Colvin was on an operating table in Boston Friday, undergoing surgery that would end his season, Bill Belichick was holding a press conference.
Instead of acknowledging that Colvin was under the knife, this is what Belichick said when asked about his prized outside linebacker: "The medical people that (Colvin) is working with are going through the process that they go through . . . to determine what the best course of action is and what is the best way to handle his particular injury. . . . I think they are just trying to determine what's the best thing to do. . . . It is more important to do the right thing than to do it five minutes ago. But that's not going to affect the rehab or his situation. So, I think that's what they are doing."
It was announced in a statement from Belichick three hours later that Colvin had had surgery for a hip fracture and that his season was over.
Why then had he not said his player was having surgery when asked directly about Colvin?
This all smelled like deception. To say, "they are just trying to determine what's the best thing to do," while his player's hip was opened up on an operating table is, to say the least, spin doctoring.
As it turned out, the doctors actually were still determining the best course of action. Belichick used his pregame radio interview on WBCN to clarify why he didn't acknowledge Colvin's surgery, explaining that the procedure was exploratory.
He said that if they went in and found something, they would fix it (as they did), and Colvin would be out. If they went in and found nothing, Colvin's season may not have been over.
So by a strict interpretation, doctors were still deciding what Colvin's medical problem was while Belichick spoke to the media.
Belichick has been intermittently accused of lying to the press in his four years here, particularly during the Drew Bledsoe Saga of 2001.
Whether those accusations hold water or not depends on the interpreter's definition of lying. Belichick has changed his mind on things -- deciding to not let Bledsoe "compete" with Tom Brady for the starting role in 2001 after he returned from injury is an example. But generally, he hasn't been known to outright lie.
As for Colvin's injury itself, again, there seems to be more to it.
It seems implausible that a person can suffer a fracture in their hip while running and bending over slightly, even if that person's an octogenarian in an assisted-living facility. Yet this happened in the NFL? A player broke his hip -- one of the hardest bones in the body -- while merely running? And he's 25? And in supreme physical condition? Did he also suffer the more sinister "subluxation?"
A study done by Claude T. Moorman, M.D., at Duke University investigated the hip subluxations -- the partial dislocation of the hip joint where the ball at the top of the femur pops completely out of the hip joint -- of eight football players. Three were in the NFL, one was in college and four were in high school.
Two of the eight suffered avascular necrosis, a condition where the hip bone dies due to insufficient blood supply. If Colvin suffered a subluxation -- and the Patriots have not revealed the full injury -- he'll have to be monitored for this condition.
