According to ESPN's Chris Mortensen, who likely has good sources within the Dolphins organization thanks to his relationship with former ESPN employee Bill Parcells, Chad Pennington has a torn capsule in his throwing shoulder and will miss the remainder of the season. But Pennington will seek a second opinion from the famed Dr. James Andrews - the same guy who performed Chad's two other shoulder surgeries - before making any final decisions.
We probably should have expected this news after watching Pennington's body language on the sidelines yesterday. He's a guy who has suffered through two serious shoulder injuries on his throwing shoulder to begin with. So he knows what a "serious issue" would feel like as it happens.
Pennington initially suffered a dislocated right shoulder on the field - which the training staff immediately had to pop back into place. The question, though, was if the dislocation caused any further ligament damage - such as a torn rotator cuff - as the joint was coming out of place or being moved back into place. One of our community members who has gone through this and explains it well in this fanpost.
Pennington had an MRI done this morning and the results clearly aren't good.
I had a bad feeling about this all day - especially after hearing WFAN's Mike Francesa give us a little insight. Why is anything a New York sports radio host says relevant to the Dolphins? For those that don't know, Francesa is a big fan of Chad Pennington as a person and is hoping for the best. He's also a long-time personal friend of Bill Parcells. And though Francesa didn't have any concrete news at the time, he did say that the feeling he has gotten is that Pennington's injury is a serious one. He said there isn't too much optimism within the organization for Pennington at this point. As it turns out, Francesa looks to be dead on accurate here.
At his morning press conference, head coach Tony Sparano did not rule out the possibility of Chad Pennington playing in week four. He simply told the media, "I won’t rule anything out. We’ll wait and see."
But this news basically means it's now time for Chad Henne to go out and make us all believers.