A new morning has come, and I’m faced with re-evaluating the crazy things I might or might not have posted last night, wondering if I jumped the gun. Nope, I’m not backing down on my speculation that RG3 is toast for the rest of the season. If anything, I’m even more confident in it. Remember how I said that ankle dislocations were pretty damn rare in the NFL? Turns out that we had two of them yesterday! Detroit Lions DB Nevin Lawson suffered one as well, but you probably didn’t hear about it because A, it’s Nevin Lawson, and B, it’s the Detroit Lions. Maybe even C, he’s a defensive back therefore almost entirely irrelevant to the fantasy football world that most NFL reporting revolves around.
As always, there’s all sorts of problems in comparing injuries between different players. I get that. But it’s better than just making up ridiculous numbers, right? God I hope so. Anyway, let’s take a quick look at how the two separate injuries are being treated in the media so far.
Washington, for some unknown reason, seems to be hoping that RG3 can return in four or five weeks, at least according to this report from the usually reliable ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio. In all fairness, that’s just what Washington is hoping for, not what they actually expect. Also, there’s more testing to do, so there’s still a lot of information lacking as far as the severity of the injury.
On the other hand, Detroit Lions best awesomely-named beat reporter, Tim Twentyman, is already saying that Nevin Lawson is likely done for the season. There’s a lot of speculation there, but I like the cut of Mr. Twentyman’s jib. He’s ready to call it rather than wait for the lethargic and vague clubhouse updates.
Why is there such a difference between these two estimates? There’s one good reason, and then plenty of nonsense. The good reason in the difference of estimates is that Lawson’s dislocation was severe enough to require immediate surgery. As in, he was in surgery by the time the coach was giving post-game interviews. That’s pretty severe. RG3 did not require the same immediate surgery (at least that we know of), so we could assume that RG3’s ankle dislocation might not be as severe. Then again, nobody is saying that RG3 will not require surgery. They’re simply saying that they’ll be doing further test to assess the damage to his ankle, and then deciding about surgery after more information is known. Really though, that pretty much wraps it up for the, “why these injuries are different,” argument.
In the opposite corner, we can find plenty of reasons that the two should be compared. Yes, the two athletes play different positions. Defensive backs have to sprint (therefore need their ankle) much more than most quarterbacks. But RG3 is not the traditional pocket passer who runs like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Yup, that’s a Tom Brady jab, and it hurts me to write it. Honestly though, Tom Brady runs like maybe Dr. Frankenstein couldn’t find two legs of the same length so he just tried to make it work with one leg that was a few inches shorter than the other. In contrast, RG3’s success is based upon his ability to make plays with his feet when the opportunity arises. If he cannot move well, he will quickly be destroyed by an opposing player who is larger, stronger, and meaner than himself. This situation is nothing like when Peyton “Old Man” Manning somehow played through two sprained ankles in 2013 (and played a good game too). Without his ankle at 100%, RG3 is 0% effective. It doesn’t help matters that Kirk Cousins is tearing shit up in his absence.
This really highlights how bad the current landscape of injury reporting is. Why would one player be quickly dismissed as out for the year, while another is optimistically out only four weeks? Seems sort of like people are just drawing timetable estimates out of a really big hat. Until proven otherwise, I think Tim Twentyman is spot-on with his pessimism. I’m curious to see if the RG3 injury becomes this year’s Aaron Rodgers’ collarbone story, where the media spends every remaining week of the year speculating on whether or not he’ll start in the upcoming game. Meanwhile, I’ll be screaming myself hoarse over here, calling everyone idiots.
