It’s been a funny little 24 hours for me. First, Nick Foles goes down with that injury that we later confirmed was a fractured collarbone. Second, I take to the blog-waves (that’s a thing) telling everyone that seven or eight weeks is the right sort of timeframe to be throwing around as a possible comeback. Look it up, I said that here. Posted it at 2:57pm EST, Sunday, November 2nd. I spent a good chunk of Sunday evening sort of attacking every report that I saw that tried to throw ridiculously optimistic estimates on the injury. I was even called annoying for it (and maybe rightly so). Last night, the big boys had a lot of those ridiculous reports. Here are a few:
@nfl one month is getting off easy. Closer to 8 weeks likely.
— Craig Zumsteg (@CraigZumsteg) November 3, 2014
@Jeff_McLane @TheRealDGunnCSN Historical cases indicate more like 6-8 weeks: http://t.co/alFiPSx5ph
— Craig Zumsteg (@CraigZumsteg) November 3, 2014
All through today, as we waited for Foles MRI results and the inevitable information leak, people stuck pretty close to those estimates. NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal even quoted someone as saying Foles would miss, “a month or more,” and he pretty much dropped the, “or more,” part when repeating the timetable.
Then, an odd thing happened. Around 2pm, the diagnosis of fractured (or “cracked,” which really means nothing except maybe that the fracture is not displaced and season-ending at this point) collarbone hit the wires. Here’s what I love though… suddenly everyone, and I mean everyone, had a new, much more reasonable estimate:
Following his MRI, #Eagles QB Nick Foles is out 6-8 weeks with collarbone fracture, source says. He won't need surgery on it, though
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) November 3, 2014
Not needing surgery on fractured clavicle, Eagles QB Nick Foles now expected to miss 6-8 weeks, per source.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 3, 2014
Nick Foles will not need surgery to correct his broken collarbone, NFL source confirms reports. He'll be sidelined 6-8 weeks maybe more.
— Jeff McLane (@Jeff_McLane) November 3, 2014
So what the fuck happened there? Why do these reporters believe that one month was a reasonable estimate yesterday and an unreasonable one today? The medical diagnosis on Foles, as serious as it is, is still the best-case scenario. Foles does not need surgery… simply time to heal. It’s not like the diagnosis came back showing a more drastic injury than we originally suspected. What happened in those roughly 24 hours that made my original estimate look more correct? Truth is, I have no clue. My estimate was based on historical recoveries. Not a lot of them, really only two, but it was still enough to lead me to say we were looking at a seven or eight week recovery and that it might be difficult for Foles to come back due to how late in the season it already is. Now, suddenly with very little new information, all the experts are falling into lockstep with my estimate. (Oh, I’m not delusional, I know that those experts don’t read this blog much less listen to me.) In my mind, this is just another case of the media scrambling to build their own sloppy, premature estimates, or letting someone else build sloppy, premature estimates for them. Maybe someday they’ll listen and look to historical context. (Unbearably annoying sigh)
Spot on with that call. I’m really surprised with all the money the networks have they don’t at least have a chart of this stuff.
That surprises me too. Seems like they’d want to avoid situations like this where they have to change their estimates so drastically. Then again, it could be that they’re just parroting something someone told them and not stopping to assess anything themselves. Either way, it’s sloppy.