When I comb through press conferences and interviews trying to find details about player injuries, I’m sometimes surprised by how optimistic coaches and players are about injuries. I mean, yeah, I’ve been doing this long enough that I should know better, but every week there are a few that stand out as strange to me. This week’s oddest quote came from AZ head coach Bruce Arians. I had to dig a little to find the full quote here, so as to ensure that I wasn’t taking this out of context. In talking about DB Tyrann Mathieu’s fractured thumb, Arians said this:
Tyrann (Mathieu) is still at the doctor’s. We’ll wait and see. Best case scenario he’ll have a cast (on his thumb) and play, and I think the worst case scenario is he’ll probably have a pin (inserted) and (miss) three weeks. We’ll see how that goes.”
How is missing three weeks possibly the, “worst case scenario,” for this (or really any) injury? I can look to my database and check some numbers. It turns out that three weeks is a pretty decent ballpark there. DB Steve Gregory missed three weeks in 2013 with a thumb fracture. Clay Matthews missed four weeks, then reinjured his thumb and missed another two weeks. I have no beef with Arians’ surgery rehab estimate there… that’s probably about right. But to think that that’s a, “worst case,” no, that’s bullshit. Worst case is that Matthieu misses the rest of the season, including playoffs. Worst case is maybe even that Matthieu suffers setbacks that affect him next year, or the rest of his career. That’s rare, and I’m not saying there’s any reason to believe that, but isn’t that what the term, “worst case,” is reserved for? Am I the only one bothered by this language?
Relentless optimism: coaches are embracing probabilistic rather than deterministic projections and actually using “worst case” to mean some high %ile! After all, the worst case would be “dies, never plays again,” and that’s kind of absurd. Probably. Please don’t die, Tyrann.
But it most likely doesn’t go beyond Arians saying something that’s not patently false that maximizes the preparation offenses have to put in for Mathieu.
Or coaches just regurgitate whatever the doctors say…I could hear this verbatim coming from a doc or physical therapist.
I think you’re right about coachspeak often being regurgitation based on what the coach heard from the medical staff. What frustrates me even more is when the media picks up on those tidbits and regurgitates them further, thus creating an unrealistic rehab timeline in the minds of most NFL fans. And yes, there’s always the competitive advantage angle to consider, where coaches want to keep their opponents in the dark. I’m thinking that all future coachspeak should come with footnotes.