Chargers LB Kenneth Murray Reveals Why He Waited to Have Ankle Surgery This Offseason

Chargers linebacker Kenneth Murray had surgery on his left ankle Thursday, repairing an injury he suffered during the first month of the 2021 season.

The timing of the surgery raised some questions: why did he wait so long into the offseason to get it done? Did the injury get worse over the last few months? Did rehab not work? There are a lot of layers to this in which questions on the timeframe of the surgery are warranted.

On Friday, one day after Murray posted a picture of himself at the hospital on his Instagram account following the procedure, he delivered an update to his social media followers on why he waited to have the surgery completed.

Murray said the following in his post:

"Okay, so I see a lot of (people) asking obviously why I just got surgery etc so let me kind of paint the picture for you. So I got hurt two days before our MNF game Week 4 vs. the Raiders. It was an ankle injury. I was running and my foot stepped on a goal post pylon by the endzone which made it worse and not your regular ankle sprain. I was down for awhile around 7 weeks not being able to walk the first 2 weeks then progressing back and (then) basically dealing with the ankle for the rest of the year after that. So in the NFL after your season is over before you can leave, you have what you call an exit physical where they check you out and whatever you hurt during the season they re-image (MRI/X-Ray, etc) to determine where you are and what's the next step. So obviously since I had injured my ankle pretty significantly, we decided to do another MRI in January just after the season was over. It showed my ankle still had some injuries to it but at the time, the suggestion from the team physician was to rest it for 8-10 weeks and that should take care of it and it would be good. So I did that, l completely deloaded my ankle for the first 10 weeks and also was working through ankle rehab to make everything stronger. After the rest weeks were over, I slowly started to ramp back up into running and that's when I noticed my ankle was still hurting only when I ran. So we decided to get another image (MRI) of the ankle and that is when we were able to see the ankle was pretty much the same and rest really didn’t change the image (MRI) significantly so that's when options started to we weighed and came to (the) conclusion of having the operation."

Murray didn’t elaborate on when he expects to be back on the field but categorized the surgery as a "success."

Murray underwent shoulder surgery last offseason, so now as he enters his third year in the NFL, he's coming off another offseason in which he had to endure a procedure.

While the Chargers saw linebacker Kyzir White walk in free agency and sign a one-year, $3 million contract with the Eagles, the hope for Murray for the season ahead was to deliver his best season yet, filling the void of White alongside Drue Tranquill and others.

Now, with Murray enduring offseason surgery, his timeline to get back onto the field remains unclear.

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Nick Cothrel is the publisher of Charger Report. Follow Nick and Charger Report on Twitter @NickCothrel & @ChargerReport for more Chargers coverage.