Saquon Barkley knee surgery will be done on Friday

New York Giants star running back Saquon Barkley is set to have surgery to repair his torn ACL on Friday in Los Angeles, per multiple reports. The surgery comes more than a month after Barkley suffered his injury in a Week 2 game against the Chicago Bears.

Jordan Ranaan of ESPN reported that the surgery will include “some meniscus cleanup.”

Dr. Kyle Flik, an orthopedic surgeon in New York’s Capital Region who has been a team physician for several Albany area minor league teams, told Big Blue View after Barkley’s injury that waiting several weeks for swelling and inflammation to calm down in the injured knee is considered the best practice.

“We learned many, many years ago, mainly from the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo. where people would be out there skiing and they would tear their ACL and the doctors out there would convince them to stay and have their surgery. Those surgeries were done during what I would call the acute phase, meaning very shortly after the injury within a few days. A lot of those patients got very, very stiff.

“So, what we’ve learned is that if you let the knee calm down a little bit, let the swelling subside, let that initial inflammation settle down and then do the reconstruction a few weeks later, two or three weeks, that those patients usually do better.”

Barkley’s surgery has also been reportedly delayed because the physician performing the surgery, Dr. Neal ElAttrache — the head team physician for the Dodgers and the NFL’s Rams — was in Major League Baseball’s bubble until the World Series ended earlier this week.