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Hicks, Eagles have to be happy that his strange injury isn't that serious

The linebacker broke his right pinkie finger last month during his honeymoon. Fortunately for him and the team, it shouldn't be a problem once the regular season rolls around.

Eagles linebacker Jordan Hicks (center) looks down at his bandaged right hand that he broke on his honeymoon as he explains how it all happened, after the Eagles first full team practice at training camp on Thursday.
Eagles linebacker Jordan Hicks (center) looks down at his bandaged right hand that he broke on his honeymoon as he explains how it all happened, after the Eagles first full team practice at training camp on Thursday.Read moreMICHAEL BRYANT / Staff Photographer

There are injuries in sports that we regard as common, run-of-the-mill. They might indeed be severe, but they occur so frequently that we barely shrug when we learn of them. A running back makes a cut and tears a knee ligament. A pitcher's fastball suddenly loses 10 mph; oh, no, he needs Tommy John surgery. A hockey player takes a stick blade to the mouth, and the price is seven of his teeth.

Then there are injuries in sports that, by the circumstances surrounding them, deserve to be preserved in the amber of posterity—tales of disabled-list stints and strings of DNPs that one would assume were apocryphal if the athletes themselves did not confirm their validity. Yes, Detroit Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell was wearing a Frankenstein costume and standing on stilts at a Halloween party when he tripped and tore cartilage in his left knee. Yes, Oakland Athletics catcher Mickey Tettleton brought on a foot infection by tying his shoelaces too tightly. And yes, former La Salle great Lionel Simmons spent so much of time playing his Nintendo Game Boy during his rookie season with the Sacramento Kings that he missed two games with wrist tendinitis.

Where, then, to place Jordan Hicks and his broken right pinkie finger? Hicks, the Eagles' starting middle linebacker, took part in practice Thursday, his hand wrapped in a bulging, soft white cast, his ego tender from the chop-busting his teammates had been giving him. "That's been the question of the last few days," he said. "What happened? What happened? What happened?"

Here's what happened: During his honeymoon last month, in Greece, Hicks was walking near a pool at a Mykonos resort. The pool deck was composed of rocks that had been coated in a glaze or varnish. He slipped on the uncertain terrain, used his right hand to brace his fall, and instantly knew something was wrong with his hand. He called his agent, then Eagles trainer Chris Peduzzi, who told him to get an X-ray. The next morning, Hicks and his wife, Ivana, took a ferry from Mykonos to Santorini, "and the guy picking us up took us directly to the hospital," Hicks said.

He was not immediately reassured.

"The freaking doctors and nurses were smoking cigarettes," he said. "They were relaxing, sitting there, smoking, having a great time, and I was like, 'I'm going to limit what they do to me.'"

The X-ray confirmed that Hicks had broken the fifth metacarpal — the long bone, closest to the knuckle, of the pinkie finger — on his right hand. But the fracture was minor enough that, even though the doctors were willing to put a cast on his hand, Hicks got along for the rest of the trip, another five days, without one. He had close to full mobility in his hand, he said, and felt no pain. Once he and Ivana returned home, he underwent surgery, doctors inserting a pin into the finger to stabilize it.

Already, Hicks had suffered his share of those common, run-of-the-mill football injuries. In 2013, while at the University of Texas, he tore his left Achilles' tendon — a blow that likely contributed to his being available in the third round of the 2015 draft, where the Eagles selected him. In his rookie season, during a Week 8 victory over the Dallas Cowboys during which he returned an interception for a touchdown, Hicks tore a pectoral muscle and missed the rest of the season. As it turned out, the broken finger will be cake compared to those, but he didn't know that at the time.

"I was a little bit nervous," he said. "I had done this stuff on the field. I've done my share. But off the field, I've really never had anything like that, so the fact that it happened and I was so far away … just adds a bit more stress, a bit more pressure. I think what made me confident was that we were able to get an X-ray so quick and really diagnose what was going on so fast. And also hearing Peduzzi tell me I'm all right. Guys have had this and played the next week. If we were in the season, that would have been me — no doubt about it."

With all these injuries, particularly this strange one, did he start asking himself, Why me?

"My mindset has kind of shifted from that to really being more of, 'What now is going to hold me back?'" he said. "I feel like I've been through enough to understand and compare what I'm going through in that moment to those things, to those tough times that I've been through. And that's what, you could say, life is about. You go through all these things, and you come out on the other side better, and the mindset you have from those things is shaped in those moments."

Hicks isn't sure how long until he will practice without wearing the cast, which is mostly a precautionary measure, he said. There seems little reason to think he won't be ready for the Eagles' regular-season opener against the Redskins on Sept. 10. Between now and then, though, the training staff should probably keep an eye on him whenever he bends down to tie his shoes, just to be safe.