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The title of the long-running television show M*A*S*H was short for the phrase, “Mobile Army Surgical Hospital”.
The situation comedy featured a team of medical doctors and support staff who utilized humor to offset a high-stress working environment during the Korean War years of the early 1950’s.
Whether you have been playing in a fantasy football league or just following the sport, it seems like many teams and our favorite players are going down due to injuries early this season.
How the New Orleans Saints went from 2-0 to 2-5 in five easy lessons
In the first two games of the 2024 NFL season, the New Orleans Saints pounded the pitiful Carolina Panthers 47-10 and went to Dallas and clobbered the Cowboys 44-19.
Two weeks into the season, Saints offensive coordinator Clint Kubiak was all but assured to made a king in one of the winter season Mardi Gras parades.
His game plans were creative and included all of the pieces of a talented New Orleans offensive unit. Defenses were confused while the Saints punter’s leg was falling asleep along the sidelines from a lack of movement.
Gleeful Saints fans (me included) once again exclaimed, “WhoDat say they gonna beat dem Saints?”
Why not? At 2-0 in the NFC South, the Saints were looking like a legitimate threat to have a chance to host February’s Super Bowl game in their very own Superdome!
Until the injury bug became an epidemic in the Crescent City.
In Game #3 at home against Philadelphia, the Saints lost versatile tight end/quarterback/running back Taysom Hill prior to the game. Pro Bowl offensive center and team captain Erik Hill injured his groin early in the Philadelphia game. Erik Hill’s injury required surgery, and he is currently on injured reserve.
Since then, the injuries for the Saints have grown. Quarterback Derek Carr (who was finally looking like a keeper) went down with an oblique injury and hasn’t played a game since.
The Saints have now lost five straight games to drop to 2-5 as their starters continue to show-up on the NFL’s weekly injury reports.
This week, Saints running back Alvin Kamara (who was already playing despite injured ribs) told reporters that he had been playing in the past two games with a broken hand as well!
“The reality of this league is nobody is 100 percent,” said Kamara this week. “If you’re 100 percent, you might be Superman or something and need a drug test. Nobody is 100 percent in this league, so it’s a race every week to get back to that. As long as I feel like I can protect myself on the field, I’m going to go.”
MEDIC!!!
The NFL’s mid-week injury report for all 32 teams features three primary categories. Remember that the NFL allows teams to dress-out just 53 players on their weekly roster with another 17 players remaining in reserve on the team’s practice squad.
The “Questionable” injury classification means that the player’s injury is severe enough to be considered a toss-up as to playing in the next game. It may become a game-day decision.
If you see “Out”, the player’s injury is so severe that he will not participate in this week’s game. Something like a severely sprained ankle for a running back might place him into this category.
The “Injured Reserve” designation means that this player is injured so badly that the team is permitted to replace him for several weeks with someone from the team’s practice squad.
Any player moved onto the IR list must miss a minimum of four games. Once the player is cleared to return to practice, he has 21 days to either rejoin the active 53-man roster or be placed on season-ending Injured Reserve. At that time, the player may also be released or traded.
Let’s take a look at the injury report this week from around the NFL
Entering NFL Week #8, there were five teams which had 20 or more players dealing with some degree of serious injuries. That’s nearly 40% of those team’s primary players.
Does it come as any surprise that four of those five teams are struggling on the field?
Carolina (1-6) and Miami (2-4) lead the walking wounded with 24 injured players this week. New Orleans (2-5), San Francisco (3-5) and Pittsburgh (5-2) have 21 injured team members apiece.
On the other end of the injury spectrum, the 5-2 Minnesota Vikings and 3-4 Cincinnati Bengals had the fewest reported injured players with nine players with that designation. Close behind with “just” ten injuries in Week #8 were the 6-0 Kansas City Chiefs and 4-2 Philadelphia Eagles.
It isn’t a secret that NFL teams with the top records generally have the fewest key injuries during any particular season.
Football injuries to the head are making news this week
Though other professional team sports must deal with key injuries, nothing comes close to the collision sport of football. In particular, concussions can lead to extremely damaging long-term effects on players.
A few days ago, college senior quarterback Grayson McCall (formerly at Coastal Carolina and playing this season for North Carolina State) surprised the sports world by announcing his immediate retirement from football.
Considered a top NFL quarterback prospect prior to the season, McCall has suffered several concussions during his four years in college football.
After being carted off the field again in September after another serious concussion, Grayson McCall is heeding the advice of his doctors and family to end his playing days. He is grateful for the opportunities to play football but wants to pursue his new goal of a coaching career once he completes his academic course work.
Then there’s Tua…
On the other side of the concussion spectrum, we have the worrisome case of Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. After suffering multiple concussions during his first few seasons in the NFL, the former University of Alabama quarterback had yet another serious head injury during Week #2 in September.
If you were wondering if Tua has given much consideration of retiring from professional football after multiple concussions, he provided a rather surprising answer this week.
“I love this game, and I love it to the death of me,” said Tagovailoa. “This is what makes me happy, and I’m going to do it.”
The Miami quarterback confirmed Thursday that he has been cleared by doctors to play in the Dolphins’ game this Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. He also told the press that he will not wear a Guardian Cap (an additional layer of head protection) over his helmet.
In case you were wondering, Tua’s lucrative contract with the Miami Dolphins provides him with $167 million in guaranteed money. He is married and has two young children.
The NFL says, “Everything is just fine. In fact, there are fewer concussions today than several years ago!”
The popularity of the NFL has produced many of the most valuable sports franchises in America. The owners of those franchises have a vested interest in trying to keep their highly paid players healthy and continuing their successful television relationship with millions of fans every weekend.
In an effort to combat the negative PR associated with serious football injuries, the NFL has become more pro-active in gathering data about that subject in the past decade. Since the league does its own research, it’s not a surprise that the NFL said that some major injuries have been on the decline in the past decade.
NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills said that concussion numbers in 2023 remained nearly the same when compared to the previous season in 2022.
The level of concussions today (216 per season) is significantly lower than the 2015-2017 baseline period number of 266 per season.
“Obviously, while concussion [numbers] are stable, we want to see them go down,” said Dr. Sills. “We believe the game can continue to be made safer, and we’re looking at how we can take the number of concussions and overall head impacts down even further.”
Do artificial surfaces cause more football injuries than traditional grass fields?
The NFL shot that theory down armed with its own stats, too.
Dr. Mackenzie Herzog, the NFL’s Analytics Epidemiology Director, said, “We monitor the injury rate or the number of those injuries per game or the number of player plays on each field. This year, the injury rate on synthetic was virtually identical to the injury rate on grass or natural fields in regular season games.”
In a nutshell, the NFL is saying that their game is getting slightly less dangerous than it was ten years ago.
Meanwhile, fans of the injury-prone and fast fading 2-5 New Orleans Saints have noticed that our beloved Black and Gold team has been turning Black and Blue this year.
“WhoDat keep beatin’ up my Saints?”
The NFL says it’s just plain buzzard’s luck.