Chan Gailey Admits To Ryan Fitzpatrick Rib Injury

For much of the off-season, with news reports circulating that Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick played the last nine games of the 2011 season with two cracked ribs, head coach Chan Gailey and GM Buddy Nix have downplayed the story, claiming that Fitzpatrick was healthy enough to play. Fitzpatrick did not show up on the injury report in that stretch.

During a Tuesday interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio, however, Gailey admitted that he did not know in-season the true extent of Fitzpatrick's injury, and attributed a particularly brutal three-game stretch to that problem.

Gailey is referring to the three games after a win over the Washington Redskins - the game in which Fitzpatrick got hurt - in which Fitzpatrick completed 54 percent of his passes, averaged 5.4 passing yards per attempt, had a 2-to-7 TD-to-INT ratio, and didn't have a single-game quarterback rating above 51.9. Buffalo lost those three games by a combined score of 106-26, falling from 5-2 to 5-5 in the process.