Carson Wentz's ACL tear confirms injuries and concussions are set to be the story of the 2017 season
Wentz's season-ending blow and Tom Savage's seizure after a blow to the head reminded us that, above anything, the injuries and concussions are the biggest issue facing the league right now
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Your support makes all the difference.You would have been forgiven for thinking that, in a season where the NFL has come under sustained attack from the president and one of the league’s owners threatened all-out legal war against the commissioner, the overriding themes of this NFL season might lie in the off-the-field turmoil.
But what we have learned is that despite political grandstanding, what the fans really care about is the product between the white lines and keeping that as high a quality as possible.
The NFL - and particularly the NFC - has seen some high-grade football this season that has provided the highlight-reel plays that fans desire, but it has all come at a rather great cost.
And when this year is done, while the Super Bowl winner will always be the biggest story, this will be an NFL season remembered for injuries and concussion issues as much as anything.
It would seem obvious that the protests take some sort of overarching narrative but they are just a small part of the social context within which the NFL finds itself – football played in an America divided, a country feeling for its moral compass.
The injuries and particularly the head injuries are not going away, in fact they appear to be getting worse. A team comprised solely of players on the Injured Reserve (IR) list - the league’s mechanism for filtering out unavailable players to allow rosters to remain stocked - would not only have romped to the playoffs but would likely have won the Super Bowl at a canter.
At one point this season, the best running-back, quarterback, wide receiver and defensive player in the league were all on IR. Only the quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, will play again this season. Seven quarterbacks from teams with legitimate playoff hopes have gone down for the year now, with the latest being Carson Wentz – probably the best player in the league this season, a favourite for the MVP award and the leader of arguably the best team in the league.
When a team’s whole season can disappear with the snap of ligament, as with Oakland last year, it is a devastating blow for an entire fanbase. For neutral fans who simply want to see the best teams face off in the post-season, it also leaves an unavoidably bitter taste.
Of course, despite a glut of quarterback injuries there has been no contract for Colin Kaepernick. Now suing the league for collusion, Kaepernick should only have to show the courtroom some tape of Joe Webb, Nathan Peterman or EJ Manuel slinging passes in meaningful NFL games this season to prove his case and win his compensation. That’s not quite how the American legal system works but any suggestion of his continued absence being down to anything but his attempts to raise awareness over social inequality in the US has been quite clearly shown up as complete nonsense.
One of the teams who should have looked at Kaepernick was the Houston Texans, who lost superstar rookie QB Deshaun Watson to a season-ender just when he was making them into the most exciting team in the league. Team owner Bob McNair, who infamously described protesting players as “inmates”, is one of the last in the league who would sign Kaep, however, and that means Tom Savage is playing instead.
Savage is, unfortunately, nowhere near the level required to play quarterback in the NFL. But that doesn’t mean that his team should be putting him into dangerous situations.
One of the incidents on Sunday that is likely to receive more attention as the week goes on is how Savage, who appeared to have a seizure on the sideline after taking a blow to the head, was allowed to re-enter the game. After settling one concussion lawsuit, the NFL is – supposedly – taking head injuries, concussions and CTE very seriously. But watching Savage’s body seize up and hands twitch as he lay on the turf to recover from a hit by Elvis Dumervil, it is impossible to understand how he was cleared to play again.
The NFL and NFLPA can do little about the injury epidemic that is afflicting the league. That is part of a violent sport where the collisions are getting harder as the players get faster, bigger and stronger in the pursuit of glory.
But they can control their concussion protocol and apply a bit of common sense. 110 of 111 former players’ brains in a recent study showed signs of CTE – the disease that is linked to multiple concussions.
Players’ lives are at risk, and while everybody wants the on-field product to be as good as it can be, nobody wants to see incidents like Savage this week, Ryan Shazier’s hospitalisation last Monday or anything that makes us think the league is no longer safe.
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