You get to do this job for a while, and you start to notice things. Like maybe you start to recognize how certain coaches skirt the rules of injury honesty (yup, Pete Carroll, looking right at you). Or maybe you stop trying to glean any information from certain stone wall coaches (I don’t need to say who that is, right?). Maybe you get a feel for how certain teams always downplay their injuries. But sometimes it’s easier than that, and it’s actually good for a quick chuckle. That’s what I just stumbled across.
Today, Oakland Raiders beat writer Jerry McDonald tweeted this:
Matt Schaub has elbow soreness, Dennis Allen says. He'll be evaluated daily. Allen says he's not concerned that it's a serious issue.
— Jerry McDonald (@Jerrymcd) August 25, 2014
For me, that was funny. For the ordinary (more well-balanced) reader, probably not so much. Here’s the thing… a team will rarely come right out and say that their quarterback stinks. But sometimes a starting QB stinks so badly that they need to be benched, and a team has to put a medical term to it. Usually they wait until there’s a legit medical concern, and then just never let the player back off the bench, like with Alex Smith’s concussion back in 2012 (sorry to hit Alex with shrapnel here, he didn’t really stink). Or like the Texans did with Matt Schaub’s mild ankle sprain last season. But every once in a while, they use one particular term that I love. “Sore arm.” Sometimes, as is the case with the latest on the always ineffectual Schaub, you get the variation of, “sore elbow.” For this exercise, they’re really the same thing. There’s never a specific underlying medical issue that would shed some light on the injury. It’s rarely elbow tendonitis, structural damage, or even a bruise. It’s always just, “sore arm.” What does that really mean? Turns out, as far as I’ve found, it means that the quarterback has a noodle arm and the team is sick of starting him. Basically it just means that he cannot complete passes well, which is pretty high on the list of things an NFL QB needs to be able to do.
How am I reading so much into two simple words like, “sore arm?” Short answer is Matt Flynn. Remember him? I think he’s still kicking around somewhere. After a few good games as Aaron Rodgers’ backup in Green Bay, QB-needy teams fell in love with Flynn and came calling. Seattle overpaid for him in 2012, and then threw out this, “sore arm,” and, “sore elbow,” designations to make sure that then-struggling rookie Russell Wilson wouldn’t get benched. In 2013, Matt Flynn went to Oakland where he again underwhelmed. The Raiders used the same, “sore arm,” term before the season even started, and ended up releasing Flynn outright by early October.
In fairness, some QBs do just get a sore arm or elbow now and again. But that’s usually an acute injury that they quickly recover from. Sometimes-stinky QB Carson Palmer showed up on the injury report with a sore elbow last season, but it was caused by an in-game injury, and Palmer recovered. Still, any time a QB gets mentioned with a sore arm, I sort of smile and nod. Yeah, I get it… he’s begun his descent down the depth chart. Let’s keep an eye on Schaub in Oakland and see if that’s the case.
