Bills pass rusher Von Miller was upbeat after undergoing surgery that discovered a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. He will miss the rest of the season.
“I’m good, man. I’m going to be right back, man,” Miller said in a video posted on social media. “Mentally, I couldn’t be in a better spot. That is the majority of it. Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t say, ‘I hate it for you.’ None of that stuff. Because I am good. I’m excited for the opportunity to show my teammates how tough I am, how hard I work and how important that this means to me. . . . Don’t blink, baby. I’ll be back. Better than ever.”
Miller injured his knee in the Thanksgiving Day win over the Lions. An MRI initially delivered hope that Miller’s ACL was intact, giving him a chance to return for the postseason.
But instead of a routine procedure to reposition Miller’s lateral meniscus while cleaning up cartilage damage, Cowboys team physician Dr. Dan Cooper discovered the worst-case scenario during surgery in Dallas on Wednesday.
“I was aware that it was a possibility,” Bills General Manager Brandon Beane said, via Sal Maiorana of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. “All crossing our fingers, but you see more when you go in there, and you’re hoping it’s just a clean out of a scope and we get him back. That’s my comments from last week where we were hopeful. That’s why we went ahead and put him on IR to start the clock in hopes that he could be back. But once Dr. Cooper got in there, he felt it wasn’t gonna hold and he needed to repair it.”
Miller will spend the offseason rehabbing with the hope that he won’t miss much of 2023.
“We think if everything goes well with rehab, we’ll have him for most of 2023,” Beane said.
