GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Ty Montgomery sees the tweets and other social media posts about him. He knows there’s an element of Green Bay Packers fans who can’t understand why it’s taken him so long to come back from an ankle injury that occurred way back on Oct. 18.
The second-year receiver says he tries not to let it upset him because few know the severity of his injury and what he went through to fix it.
“Sometimes it bothers me because I see thing that fly across my social media, but I try not to let it bother me because I know the truth,” Montgomery said. “The people that matter in this building they know, and they know what I’ve been going through.”
Before Wednesday, when Montgomery shared the details of his surgery with ESPN.com, few outside the Packers organization knew exactly what Dr. Robert Anderson had to do to Montgomery’s left ankle.
Montgomery said his surgery contained three parts: tight ropes inserted into his ligaments to hold them in place, a cartilage repair and -- perhaps most serious -- a microfracture procedure on his talus (a bone between the heel and fibula and tibia).
“I think there’s a stigma with a sprain,” Montgomery said. “But what I think a lot of people don’t understand is sprain means partial tear. And people forget I had the surgery in December.”
Montgomery offered no timetable for his return, and coach Mike McCarthy said Wednesday that it was “status quo” on Montgomery and the other four Packers (Jordy Nelson, Jared Cook, Corey Linsley and Sam Barrington) on the physically unable to perform list.
The 2015 third-round pick said he has been cleared to run and even run some routes and added, “I pretty much do everything everybody else does except practice.”
Montgomery was off to a promising start as a rookie, with 15 catches for 136 yards and two touchdowns (plus a 31.1-yard average on seven kickoff returns) in five-plus games before his injury against the visiting Chargers. He made several attempts to come back and impressed McCarthy with his persistence, but when he was never able to get cleared and was placed on injured reserve on Dec. 21, he finally opted for surgery.
“I feel like any time you come off of a surgery -- especially an extensive surgery like I had -- no matter what it is you’re going to be sore, you’re going to have days where it doesn’t feel as good, but you’ve got to push through it,” Montgomery said.