Sorry to all six of my loyal readers, but I’ve been up to my ears in work writing injury coverage over at Footballguys.com lately. Plus I have a new baby, and no matter what anyone might say, babies don’t take care of themselves. With all the new adjustments, writing for Questionable To Start sort of got pushed aside for a bit. But rejoice, for I have… oh wait, baby just spit up.
The biggest thing I’ve been watching this week (besides season two of Z Nation) has been the drama of Ravens RB Justin Forsett. He injured himself in last week’s game, and everyone seems to be pretending that he’ll be just fine for this Sunday’s game against the 49ers. I’m generally a pessimistic guy when it comes to NFL injuries, and this one has been screaming danger since Sunday, at least to me.
One of the awesome things about working over at Footballguys is that I have a team of coworkers, so it’s not just me sitting here cultivating my madness. I can only be pessimistic on so many injuries before I start to wonder, “hey, is it just me? Why am I the only one?” Thankfully, I’m not the only injury guy seeing trouble with Forsett, which makes me think at least I’m not the only crazy one. Footballguys has a writer who is also a doctor, and he’s a great resource. In fact, he’s how I ended up writing over there, but I followed his work long before they hired me. His name is Dr. Jene Bramel, and you can find him here on Twitter. Worth a follow. Anyway, he wrote up some great lines about why he’s also pessimistic on Forsett, and you can find them (behind a paywall) here.
If you don’t want to pay, I’ll boil at least a little bit of it down for you. But it’s worth paying for. Anyway, the mechanism of injury (how the injury occurred), as shown on broadcast, makes it look like it’s most likely a high ankle sprain. If you read my stuff, you know that that’s often a multi-week injury. Coach John Harbaugh has stated that Forsett avoided a high ankle sprain. First of all, Harbaugh (any Harbaugh) is not known for injury honesty. Even this season, Harbaugh has already been caught in at least one injury lie. Second, take a look at this photo that Dr. Jene posted on Twitter:
When I say player reaction, here’s where Forsett grabbed — over shin, not outside of ankle. More c/w high ankle. pic.twitter.com/houRhLRxZu
— Jene Bramel (@JeneBramel) October 12, 2015
How can you look at that and not suspect a high ankle injury?
As if that wasn’t enough, Forsett did not practice on Wednesday or Thursday. He put in a limited practice on Friday, and everyone seemed to be like, “Whew, looks like he’ll be fine for Sunday!” Except me, of course.
I should admit that I have some baggage here due to my own bias. Something about this situation reminds me very much of last season when Giants RB Rashad Jennings insisted that, despite not practicing, he would be fine for Week 14 with a similar, “don’t call it a high ankle sprain,” injury. He was officially active, but he was in too much pain to do anything, and Andre Williams took the reins, handing in a 24/131/1 performance before being banished back to RBBC purgatory the following week.
Using that one, biased comparison, I’d point out that even if Justin Forsett is active on Sunday, (which people are just now Friday evening becoming less optimistic about) he might not see much/any action. Rookie Buck Allen might get the call, and on a team with an absolute depth chart vacuum, there wouldn’t even be anyone around to vulture Allen’s goal line carries.
If Forsett is active and plays a halfway decent game, I’ll apologize to him and Harbaugh personally (with a small editorial comment below of course) for ever doubting their words. Game on.
Edit, October 19th: Ah nuts. I was wrong. In week 7, Justin Forsett posted 17 carries for 62 yards and caught 7 passes for 39 yards. You win this round, Harbaugh. It appears you were honest and I was too pessimistic. I’ll get you next time! Wait, this is supposed to be an apology, not a challenge. Sorry.
