It’s probably just me, but I wouldn’t even know that it’s Monday if I wasn’t sitting around waiting for NFL injury clarifications. Typically teams are pretty tight-lipped with injury information following the Sunday games, or in this case the Saturday games. By Monday though, a fairly reliable stream of information comes out, as details of x-rays and MRIs are leaked or released. Honestly, that’s probably my favorite day of the week, as it’s one of the few times where you can deal in the actual nuts-and-bolts and not get too caught up in vague coachspeak.
One of the more important injuries that I’m waiting for word on today is that of Carolina Panthers receiver Philly Brown. Brown came down hard on his left shoulder, and did not return to the game. There’s been a little trickle of reports so far, but no real diagnosis. In my world, that specific diagnosis is going to be the real money shot.
With a shoulder injury like the one Brown sustained, I see three likely ways this could play out. The first is that he’s dealing with some sort of bruising, either to a muscle or to a bone. These injuries are pretty vague in that they are all about pain management. A serious bruise will cause pain, swelling, maybe even a little loss of range-of-motion and strength. But, for the most part, these injuries are minor. They don’t tend to cause players to sit on gameday. Yes, they are painful, and they’d leave me all whiny and bedridden (or more accurately, more whiny and bedridden) but NFL players tend to play through these injuries. DB Joe Haden missed one game with a shoulder bruise this year, so it’s not unheard of to sit out, but it’s not common.
Next on my list of suspects is the AC sprain. An AC sprain is sort of a moderate injury in terms of severity. Plenty of people play through AC sprains, including Philly Brown himself earlier this year (in his other shoulder). Other players miss some time… it all depends on the severity. Every once in a while, you get a player like RB Ryan Williams who landed on the IR list for the last 12 games of 2012 with an AC sprain, so I’m not trying to downplay these as minor injuries.
The possibility we should really be watching for though is a shoulder dislocation. Closely related to this would be a shoulder subluxation, which is when the shoulder is dislocated but pops right back into place. Of the two, I’d rather have the subluxation, but both can be serious. Some players can bounce back and play through shoulder dislocations, such as defensive backs Morris Claiborne, Michael Griffin, and Chris Conte. But this is an injury that can easily come with complications and land a player on the shelf. That’s what happened earlier this year with WR Brian Quick, who missed the last nine games of the year on IR because his shoulder dislocation came with a rotator cuff tear that required surgery. Again, some people come right back from dislocations and subluxations, but this is not something you can count on.
Then of course there are the dark horse candidates. These would be outcomes like a fractured collarbone or arm. So far, it sounds like these ones aren’t in play, but the trouble is you can never rule them out for sure until you actually hear the specific diagnosis from a reliable source. Even if we don’t hear an exact diagnosis, these severe possibilities would be ruled out by Brown participating in practice at any level.
So for now, we wait. Let it be known that I hate ending a post with that sort of cop-out.
Update, January 5th, 2:53PM: According to this report from ProFootballTalk, Brown’s injury is a shoulder subluxation. Yikes, that’s not great news. The Panthers are talking about this as a day-to-day pain tolerance issue, so we can safely assume that there’s no ligament damage or complications. Still, that’s not the easy call for whether he plays or not on Sunday that I was hoping for.
