He doesn’t have a hamstring.
Or part of one, at least, which is pretty mind-blowing when you consider what Bruce Ellington does for a living.
Catch footballs. Run real fast. Stop and cut on a dime.
And for the last two weeks — and probably the next five as well — he'll replace Golden Tate in the Detroit Lions offense.
Yes, the Lions’ newest slot receiver is missing one of the three muscles that make up his left hamstring, which seems pretty Lions-y except for the fact that Ellington said it hasn’t affected him one bit.
He still catches passes — 12 in the past two weeks, in fact; second on the team behind Kenny Golladay. He still returns punts. And at 5-9, he still can dunk a basketball from a standing position (and he has the video on his phone to prove it).
Ellington popped his hamstring in a meaningless preseason game during his final season with the San Francisco 49ers in 2016.
He went back to field a punt, dodged a defender who dove at his leg, and as he planted to sprint upfield, he felt a sharp pain in his leg.
“When I looked down I just saw like a ball (on the inside of my knee),” Ellington said.
The ball was the semitendinosus muscle, which had rolled up on the inside of Ellington’s leg.
The semitendinosus muscle is one of three muscles that make up the hamstring in the back of the thigh. It helps flex the knee and rotate the hip, but it turns out it’s not quite as essential as the other hamstring muscles to running and jumping.
“It’s like the smaller muscle on the side,” Ellington said. “You probably can feel it a little bit of your hamstring if you feel the inside (of your leg). I can’t feel it anymore. I don’t have it.”
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