Avoiding the Major Injuries

This time of year, it’s what we all fear the most, major injuries, you know, the preseason-ending kind, especially the season-ending variety.  Go on injured reserve, the only thing that player will be reserving is a spot on next season’s team.

Some teams have been hit hard already.  Just go check in on the Denver Broncos. They took big hits the first week of camp, including losing Elvis Dumervil for the season.  The Arizona Cardinals avoided major injury over the first week plus of training camp.  Then, Monday afternoon practice happened.  Beanie Wells was not expecting a hit, and bam….gets put on the ground, injuring his ribs.  For several hours we were left wondering, uh oh!  Here we go!

Luckily Wells’ injury was not serious and he is listed as day-to-day.  Not every player is that lucky and makes you wonder who is next?  How important is is to go all out during a time that counts towards nothing except conditioning and timing more or less.

Even Matt Leinart got into the mix last week when he was hit hard by fellow teammate Darnell Dockett.  You certainly don’t want to see your starting quarterback go down first week of camp, even if many fans wouldn’t be disappointed by it necessarily.  I certainly would.

The NFL is considering reducing preseason to two or three games.  Will that reduce training camp?  Probably not.  It just means teams will start camp earlier.  However, I am for making more games count.  If a played gets hurt in a meaningless preseason game, then the injury will have been for nothing.  However, at least in a regular season game, he made it count, you hope!

Some teams can literally see their chances dashed even with one or two major training camp injuries.  With the Broncos losing Dumervil and also seeing two of their running backs get hurt last week, Broncos fans are left asking, who’s next?  What about the Cards?  Who is next?  Will there be a next?  Sure there will be bangs and bruises, that’s the nature of the game.  You just hope no one of major importance goes down early.  It sure would be a shame to call it a season in September.

So, that leads me to tonight’s poll…