Too Many Injuries

[bigunreal]

This NFL season has seen an inordinate number of injuries, and I think
I'm not the only one questioning the toughness and physical
conditioning of these players because of it. I mean, how can someone
miss numerous weeks with something called a "turf toe?" Try calling in
sick to YOUR job because one of your toes is sore! Then try doing it
for weeks. As a fantasy football player, the injuries this season have
been particularly frustrating to me. For instance, I drafted Bengal
rookie RB Chris Perry in the 1st round of my all-keeper league. Perry
has been inactive for most of the season with some unspecified,
mysterious abdominal injury. What is that? How can an allegedly
superbly trained physical specimen miss so much time for such a
seemingly minor thing? I'm sorry, but there have been way too many
groin pulls and thigh bruises this season, not to mention the number of
season-ending knee and ACL injuries occuring to players during
practice, many of them not even involving any contact. Again, how is it
possible for these supposedly superior athletes to injure themselves so
severely when they are merely walking across a practice field?

 

[jaxvid]

I bet a lot of these guys have failed or are going to fail a drug test so they use the injury excuse to miss time they will miss anyway. The club probably plays along because it is better for the club to have a player on IR then suspended.

Also it is no secret the clubs use the IR list to "redshirt" players that need time to develop or they want to hide for a while. For guys with guarenteed contracts the IR is the football world equivalent of "workers comp" something that is no stranger to those from the urban environment.

 

[cxt7]

I think charles woodson is a perfect example of this, in the article from espn it said "didn't play against the Titans because of an injured knee, but hustled through the locker room high-fiving teammates afterward." and he was at a night club the night he was arrested wow his knee must be bad.

 

[Don Wassall]

What's been encouraging about this season is that very few white receivers and tight ends have been injured, unlike recent years. Todd Heap was the only TE to suffer a major injury; Stokley and Bennett were nicked up at times but played all year, with the sterling results we knew they were capable of. It's been a plague of black injuries this year in the NFL, and as noted many were of dubious nature.

Black athletic "toughness" is way over-rated. In football, blacks have given us such "advancements" as running out of bounds to avoid being hit; taking plays off; barely trying to tackle a runner or making no attempt at all; and "self-tackling," deliberately falling down in the field of play to avoid contact (not to be confused with the amazing black propensity for losing their balance and falling down for no discernable reason). And let's not forget the dramatically injured player, lying motionless on the field for 15 minutes or more, who is carted off in an ambulance as both teammates and opponents hold hands and pray, who almost never has a serious injury. Just as with basketball, football has sold its soul to pander to blacks.

The white dominated NFL of yore was probably too tough, especially for today's emasculated society, but you can bet many of the old-timers have nothing but contempt for the way the game is played now.
Edited by: Don Wassall

 

[sport historian]

ESPN Classic sometimes shows NFL Films, Lost Treasures. Volume I of this series is perhaps the most interesting. It covers 1962-65. Throughout, narrator Steve Sabol marvels at the brutality of the hitting 40 years ago. Sabol says something like, "The players may be bigger and faster now, but there seemed to be more piling on and vicious hits in the old days. Now, these same hits would draw a fine from the League office." He noted that a player would take an especially hard (or cheap) shot, get up and go back to the huddle without showing any reaction.


Wasn't it Emmitt Smith who would lay on the field for 15 minutes for what turned out to be not a serious injury? Skip Bayless mildly chided Smith for this in one of his Cowboy books.