There is a show that I DVR and watch every day, a talking head show on ESPN called Around the Horn. It is either the greatest show ever created, or the worst, and I swear on some days I just can’t tell. But I have watched it for around 15 years so it must be doing something right. On the show the host, Tony Realli, poses questions to four sportswriters and then gives them points based on the erudition of their answers. He also deducts points if they say something egregious, or if they utter a banned word, a word so trite and cliché that no one speaking intelligently should stoop to using it. One of the banned words is “narrative.”
There is a narrative that is routinely used when discussing two particular football players, one in the NFL and one in college. Whenever someone discusses Carson Wentz of the Philadelphia Eagles or Tua Tagovailoa formerly of the University of Alabama, the speaker will at some point get around to expressing the narrative that the person they are discussing is “fragile” or “injury-prone.”
It is perfectly true that because of injuries Carson Wentz has not played in a full quarter of any of the Eagles’ postseason games since he’s been their starting quarterback. He finally started a game this season, but left the game in the first quarter after a hit from Jadeveon Clowney gave him a concussion. And Tua, who just decided to pass on another year at ‘Bama and enter the NFL draft, has had surgery on both of his ankles and is currently recovering from hip surgery. Given these repeated absences from the playing field, what other narrative is there but “injury-prone”?
This narrative overlooks one small detail; both men make a living (well, Tua will once he is in the NFL) playing a game where very large, muscular men jump on them and drive them into the ground. I haven’t conducted a lot of research on the subject, but I do not think that I am going too far out on a limb to suspect that this just might account for their propensity to need medical assistance, not some internal flaw in their genetic code.
It is a source of concern if an athlete either: suffers a recurring injury, such as a torn or sprained ACL that indicates that part of his body is not as strong as it should be or contains a congenital defect; or suffers a variety of injuries indicating a systemic flaw in his physiognomy, such as rheumatism. The injuries suffered by Wentz and Tua have been just dis-similar enough to make me believe neither is “injury-prone.”
Wentz had an injury free college career, then suffered his first significant injury in a 2016 pre-season game when he injured his rib. He recovered to become the Eagles’ starter for most of the season. In 2017 Wentz, on the way to what appeared to be a possible MVP season, suffered an ACL injury and missed the last part of the season including the Eagles’ run to winning the Super Bowl. In 2018 he suffered a back injury, and again back-up Nick Foles took the Eagles into the playoffs.
And now in the first playoff game in the 2019-20 season, Wentz was tackled by Seahawk Jadeveon Clowney and had his head driven into the turf. He entered the concussion protocol and did not return to the game.
So, there was a rib injury, a knee, a back, and a concussion. None directly connected, all explained by being jumped on b y a large man.
Tua’s injury history can be summed up briefly: in 2018 he suffered a sprained ankle that required surgery, then in 2019 he sprained the other ankle (again requiring surgery), and after recovering played in a later game where he dislocated his hip. Maybe the two ankle sprains are cause for concern as indicating weak ankles, but the hip injury is clearly a fluke incident. Whether it caused any permanent damage is something that teams will have to decide on draft day.
Football is a violent game and violent things happen to players. The rules currently offer more protection to quarterbacks, but hits are inevitable and sometimes those hits are going to make body parts move in ways they were not intended to move. So please stop referring to players suffering more than one injury as “injury-prone.”
Until they switch to flag football, every player in the NFL is injury-prone. An athlete than can be described as injury-prone is Zion Williamson, but that’s another story.
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