Black & Blue Sunday 9/13/20
Sunday Notes on NFL Week 1 - Lots of hamstrings, not a lot of concussions
Welcome to the first Black & Blue Sunday of the NFL season. This is brand new, so the format will be evolving as we go. What I want to do with this is give you enough info to get a jump on fantasy and gambling decisions for next week. We won’t have full details on some of these injuries - MRIs almost always happen in the home city and seldom on game day. There are no accessible MRIs in stadium in the NFL. The Bengals have an MRI clinic in the stadium, but it’s more like retail space that just happens to be an imaging office. The Chiefs have one in a building there on the Harry Truman complex (Arrowhead and Kaufmann) but it’s often not accessible on game day. (I imagine Rick Burkholder or one of the docs could make a call if need be.)
I am sending this before the Sunday night game is finished and obviously before the Monday night game. Anything that happens then will be picked up on Thursday unless it’s just a huge injury.
Let’s take a look around the league at the major injuries, to see if there’s any trends or to give you the ability to make faster and better decisions than everyone else. I’ll be back on the NFL beat Thursday with more details, so subscribe now and never miss it or any of the other subscriber-only content.
(Yep, I made the first one free …)
Marlon Mack has a ruptured Achilles tendon. While a team will always say “suspected” and wait for the MRI, the Athletic Trainer (and usually the player) know from the first seconds. The players feels it and with a simple manual test (see video below) the medical staff knows as well. Mack will be done for the season, leaving the RB1 role to Jonathan Taylor, though Nyheim Hines will continue to take most of the receptions and could end up putting up the better fantasy touchdown numbers, especially if Taylor continues to struggle in goal line situations.
George Kittle went up for a high pass and as he came down, the defender hit him about waist high just as his heel struck. The weak point will always give and this was a hyperextension of the knee. Kittle immediately reached for the front of his knee, popped up, and ran gingerly to the sidelines. He was checked by the medical staff and went to the locker room early. It’s that reach that intrigues me — to the front, not the side or back. Players that get injured instinctively reach for the area. It’s a reflex and not one they can often control, so it’s telling. He returned to the game in the second half and didn’t appear to be limping, but worth keeping an eye on.
LeVeon Bell has had hamstring issues all camp and now in Week 1, he didn’t finish the game. Again, hamstring and calf injuries are exactly what I expect to see tick up over at least the next few weeks. Bell’s is more one that it doesn’t seem he healed up from a past injury than a pure ‘burst injury’, but its still not good. Early word is that the strain is minor, but that the Jets recognized Bell wasn’t going to be able to play and not re-test the hamstring. We’ll see how long he needs to heal up, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this ends up a recurring theme in 2020 for what looks like a bad team.
DeVante Parker strained his hamstring. This is as simple and clear as it is. The key now is how serious the strain is and how Parker responds to treatment. This looks like a burst injury and it would surprise me if he doesn’t miss Week 2, if not more. With both Allen Hurns and Albert Wilson opting out of 2020, there’s very little proven depth for the Dolphins. If Parker is out, there’s no one worth picking up and very little offensive value on the Dolphins.
Henry Ruggs is as exciting a young rookie as exists, along with his former college teammate Jerry Jeudy. Ruggs’ speed was going to be key to the Raiders offense this season, but an early leg injury has that in doubt. Ruggs twisted and came up hopping, with the Raiders saying he rolled his ankle. I’m a bit more worried about the knee, and no, the fact that he jogged off the field doesn’t tell us anything. This is one where if it’s an isolated ankle injury, he won’t be that limited. If there’s any knee involvement, it could be a bigger deal, so I’ll be waiting on more word early this week.
AJ Green is back in the lineup, but the ankle doesn’t appear to be fully functional. He had several plays where he was reluctant to make cuts (or couldn’t) and several where he seemingly slipped, which a source tells me has been happening in practice a lot as he’s reluctant to really “stuff in” his feet. Some of this may be mental/confidence rather than strictly physical and if so, that wouldn’t be unusual. That part could come back and quickly, but what I’ve seen of Green so far gives me no confidence that this isn’t mostly physical.
Chris Godwin got slammed to the turf late in the loss to the Saints. It was a personal foul and it looked as if he went face first into the Superdome surface. The official seemed to make a gesture as Godwin was slow getting up, so it’s possible he was asking for a concussion evaluation. Godwin walked off the field under his own power. The Bucs didn’t get back on offense, so I don’t know if Godwin could have returned. I do know that Tom Brady did not look good, though some credit should go to the Saints’ underrated defense.
David Njoku left the game with what the Browns called a “knee” - there’s little information beyond that, so severity is a complete unknown at this stage. Njoku was already asking out of Cleveland, so he may not rush back. That leaves Austin Hooper as the only good TE option for a team that looked bad to start the season. This won’t help Odell Beckham at all, since he’s really the only receiving option that can hurt a team, especially in the back of the end zone on a jump. This is a hard, hard under team for the foreseeable future.
Lane Taylor looks he he will be lost to the Packers for an extended period. He was carted off and looked in significant pain, though there was no good look at the injury. The Packers adjusted by letting Aaron Rodgers move more, away from pressure, and he can still get it done on the move even at this stage of his career. Losing a tackle often changes models in terms of O/U, but I don’t think there’s a significant adjustment to be made, though I wouldn’t expect the Packers to put up 40+ every week either.
Matt Milano had a classic hamstring strain, after a nice start. He had a quirky interception and some tackles, but the worry for the Bills is they lack LB depth. As with Parker and all hamstring injuries we see, the key here is severity and to some extent the location of the injury. Expect Milano to miss at least Week 2, though the Bills are not afraid of getting into high scoring shootouts.
Drue Tranquill got carted off and had an Aircast on as he left in both pain and tears. It was a tough one to watch, but Tranquill - who got almost no play at all on Hard Knocks - is likely done for a while. Aircasts tend to indicate a fracture, but the medical staff obviously doesn’t have X-ray vision, just experience. We’ll see how serious this is, but remember that fractures are often better than sprains or strains in terms of return time and rehab complexity.
Darqueze Dennard and Kendall Sheffield both went down in Week 1, leaving them dangerously thin in the backfield for a next week’s game with the Cowboys if both are serious. There’s no late word on either, so this one bares watching, both for points and for Cowboys QB/WR points.
If there’s one thing I’m noticing, it’s that it doesn’t feel like there were a lot of concussions or ACLs in the first week of this NFL season. There was a lot of discussion and speculation that there would be a “catchup” to these injuries since we saw a massive reduction due to the lack of pre-season games and contact in camp. It’s not zero, but if my perception is right and this holds for a few more weeks, the NFL is going to have to take a close look at changing camps and preseason games permanently.
I honestly don’t mind “Football Team” as the permanent name of the Washington franchise. I think the uniforms and even thrown together wordmarks work pretty well. Maybe it’s that I watch enough soccer to be used to FC everything, but I’d be stunned if this stuck. Dan Snyder’s not going to give up merch sales easily.
The videos I have come from YouTube. The NFL is pretty jealous about allowing it’s highlights, so apologies if these don’t show up in the newsletter. They were live when I sent, but obviously have no control over copyright claims. I hope the videos add something to the knowledge and description, though I try to avoid the gruesome. Then again, I don’t mind surgical videos.
One thing I’d love to have is an automatic tagger that would allow me to link to these players for you. Unfortunately, I don’t have that and I’m not even sure it’s possible in Substack. If anyone has an idea, let me know.
Yep, football’s back:
