If you were following the breaking news of Green Bay WR Randall Cobb’s shoulder injury yesterday on Twitter, you’d be forgiven for being confused. Plenty of people, myself included, thought it had the look of a collarbone fracture. Then word came out that it was not a collarbone fracture. Then there was this weird period where a lot of people, again myself included, tried to figure out exactly what was going on, as it didn’t seem exactly clear. Here’s the Tweet from Ian Rapoport that started all of that:
Still awaiting word on the severity of #Packers WR Randall Cobb’s shoulder injury. Among the worries, broken collarbone is not one of them.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) August 30, 2015
Let’s unpack that a little. On the one hand, this Tweet sounds like positive news. Cobb’s collarbone isn’t thought to be broken. Huzzah! But wait… if you read it again, it’s still a little odd. It’s that second line of, “Among the worries, broken collarbone is not one of them.” Among the worries? That means that there are multiple worries, right? And that these multiple worries have yet to be resolved, right? See why this didn’t sit well with me?
Let me give you a ridiculous but useful analogy. Let’s say you wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of smashing glass and footsteps coming from another room. Like the reasonable coward you are, you Usain Bolt yourself outside, possibly wearing your bedroom venetian blinds in the process. You hide in a hedge and call the police. The police show up and search the house, then come out to give your cowardly butt all the details. One officer says, “Well it wasn’t a burglar.” At that point, do you high five him and walk back into the house? Hells no. The cop has ruled out one, and only one, terrifying possibility. Sure, you’re glad that it wasn’t a burglar, but now you’re left wondering what the other possibilities are. Serial killer? Drunken hillbilly? Psycho ex? Titus Young? Chinese organ thieves? Child ghost? Human centipede? I’d also bet that the longer they took to clarify what it actually was, the more nervous you’d get.
That’s where I was with Cobb. It’s not that there are a ton of scary possibilities still out there. But there are a few, and until they are ruled out, it’s tough to celebrate the fact that he avoided the obvious collarbone fracture. Now obviously, for all sorts of legitimate reasons, RapSheet couldn’t go into great detail. But the Tweet that would’ve settled this would’ve indicated more about what injury Cobb had than what injury he did not. Without those details, we’re all left to churn rumors and speculation on Twitter. Good times.
