If It Ain’t Broke, Fix It

Oh, that Denver Bronco football, still keeping left guard Mark Schlereth in stitches.

Midway through his 12th NFL season, Schlereth underwent his 28th surgery this week, this time to repair a left knee that had previously been operated on 13 times. Schlereth has undergone five operations on his right knee, six on his elbows, one on his eyes, one to remove a back disk and one to remove a kidney stone.

This procedure, in the grand scheme, was but a minor tuneup--cleaning up torn cartilage in the back of a knee that was last operated on in July. Schlereth sat out three preseason games then and expects to be out until the Broncos’ Nov. 5 game against the Jets after the latest surgery.

The most amazing discovery this time around: Schlereth still had enough knee cartilage to tear.

“I didn’t think I had any, either,” Schlereth quipped. “I must be reproducing.”

In a guest column in the November NFL Insider magazine, Schlereth writes that “as crazy as it sounds, I’m just used to [the operations]. It’s been this way my whole adult life. . . . Once I stop playing, I’m probably going to have withdrawals. I’ll probably show up at the surgeon’s office every six months and ask, ‘Hey, what can I get fixed?’ ”