It’s not binary and trying to make it binary I think muddies the debate. One Mahomes is worth 10 Culters, Herberts, Cousinses, Carrs and Watsons. Wins obviously matter, but how you win matters more. As I mentioned earlier, there just aren’t nearly enough examples to Moneyball this thing.
Back to the actual preseason…
Look, I know this statement is precisely the kind of garbage that gets puked out by 14-year-olds on Reddit and some of the hackiest sports talking heads (who may be the same people), but I still need to put it out there.
Tyson Bagent looks like this season’s Brock Purdy. This dude looks like HIM, and while I desperately hope that Fields stays healthy and takes a massive step forward as a passer, if he misses a bunch of time…
Yes, I know it’s just 2 preseason games and Bagent isn’t even playing against the 2s, let along the 1s, but he looks like he has “it”. Right now, he’s the most poised and the best passer on the Bears roster. I’m fully prepared to be mocked for this in 6 weeks but holy crap. If the Bears try to get him onto the practice squad, he’s gone. He definitely should be the #2 ahead of PJ Walker come week 1.
The Patriots-Packers preseason game was suspended early in the fourth quarter, after rookie Patriots CB Isaiah Bolden was injured in a collision with a teammate, didn’t get up afterwards, and had to be removed from the field on a backboard.
Both coaches agreed to end the game at that point, though thankfully, initial reports are that Bolden has feeling in all of his extremities, and he’s being held in a Green Bay hospital overnight for tests.
Isaiah Bolden was released from a Green Bay hospital this morning, and rejoined the rest of the Patriots for their trip out of Green Bay today. Though the team released no specifics, a source reported that Bolden had suffered a concussion.
The Patriots had originally planned to travel to Nashville today, for several days of joint practices with the Titans, prior to their pre-season finale against Tennessee on Friday, but changed their plans after last night, and are instead returning to the Boston area for this week’s practices.
This of course reminded me of the Damar Hamlin situation last year, when the teams mutually decided not to play out the game and it was eventually cancelled. Has the league incorporated any kind of new policy to address what happens if a player is grievously injured or (God forbid) killed during a game? Last year’s situation worked itself out all right, but ISTM the NFL just can’t count on things working themselves out.
(Also, very glad to hear that Bolden is well enough to travel.)
I think everybody got spooked last year. They’re certainly going to have a shorter leash on ending a preseason game in the 4th quarter. I haven’t heard of any new, formal procedures for games ending or being suspended due to injury. It would likely be adapted from weather procedures.
By formalizing a policy, the NFL would be openly admitting that the game has life threatening injury as part of its central premise. Obviously, we know this to be true already but putting it in writing would give a bunch of litigious billionaires a coronary.
There’s also the slippery slope of what injuries rise to a level that warrants a game cancellation. Not all concussions are created equal, and commotio cordis probably wouldn’t have made the list of injuries before last season. Alex Smith had his gruesome leg injury. Chris Simms had a ruptured spleen. Johnny Knox got folded in half like a cheap lawn chair. Should those games have been cancelled?
The owners, the league and their lawyers will almost certainly prefer to live in the world of ambiguity. Let these “freak” injuries remain just that, rare and unpredictable events that we hope never to happen again (even if we know they will).
I wonder if NASCAR has a policy for what to do if a driver dies in a crash.
And, moreso, by publicizing a policy, it’d be that open admission.
They may well have quietly instituted such a policy, but not released the details to the public, for that exact reason.
Yes. There might be a top-secret file locked in a safe somewhere, but the public will almost certainly never hear of it. More likely, the league’s muckety-mucks got into a room together, locked their devices in a box along with some NDAs, and did a post-mortem on the Hamlin game and discussed how to behave in the future. This informal agreement is likely the closest they’ll get to anything official.
Obviously there is no new policy. In Seattle, in the first preseason game, a guy was carted off the field on a stretcher. Ultimately it was a concussion. The exact same scenario as what happened in the Patriots-Packers game. Except the game kept going.
This sounds plausible. I have to imagine that when Hamlin went down, a bunch of owners and league officials spilled their scotch when the teams decided more or less on their own to quit the game. This league has a policy for everything, and you can bet that wasn’t one of them. Now maybe there is one.
I recall when the roof of the Hump Dome collapsed due to a blizzard the morning before the game, the league scrambled and figured out a way to play the game on the following Tuesday. I suspect that, when they cancelled this game, they sort of figured that they’d be able to work out a similar accommodation. I don’t think they fully considered the fact that the teams might still be in shock and Hamlin’s prognosis would still be foggy 3-4 days following the event. Of course, it didn’t help that it was week 17 and a Monday night to boot.
…and both teams involved were in the playoffs.
The Colts have granted RB Jonathan Taylor permission to seek a trade. Taylor led the league in rushing in 2021, but wasn’t as effective last year, due to ankle issues; he’s been on the Colts’ PUP list since undergoing ankle surgery in January.
Taylor had sought a contract extension during the off-season, but the Colts weren’t interested, and the team is now looking to receive a first-round pick (or several lower-round picks) in exchange for him.
This game being called off could have made a huge difference in the playoff structure. Had Buffalo won, they would have been the #1 seed in the AFC and received the first round bye. Instead, they struggled to beat the Fins and then got beat pretty soundly by the Bengals, both games in Buffalo. The cancellation of this game was a plus for the Chiefs.
Both true – which is why I suspect the league does now have a policy, even if it’s not public. They don’t want surprises, and they don’t want the playoffs impacted. I’d imagine it’s something like:
- If a player dies or is taken from the field with his status uncertain – i.e., the Hamlin situation – the game may be cancelled and rescheduled (with lots of subclauses about how, where and when).
- Short of that, play on.
My guess is if it’s in the 4th quarter, whatever the score is counts as the final score. If it’s earlier than the 4th quarter, it’s a tie. I could maybe see exceptions for significant leads, like maybe if one team is ahead by three touchdowns or more then they get the win even if the game stops in the second. Or whatever.
But I agree with you guys in that I would bet a dollar they now have a policy.
I guess we’ll see when the regular season starts. Since they’re treating it inconsistently in the preseason, it’s clear they don’t have one right now.
I wouldn’t read too much into the preseason. We’ve had plenty of preseason games called off for lots of different reasons over the year. If they have a policy, I would not expect it to be strictly adhered to in the preseason.
One other interesting consideration…with the planet turning more into an unlivable hellscape every day, disruptions due to unprecedented natural disasters will certainly become more commonplace. The occasional hurricane or blizzard won’t be so occasional and we likely need to add wildfires and floods to the list of things that can wipe out a game (or players’ lives).
This feels a bit wiser to me. While the threshold for a cancellation will be high, I think postponement will become less likely after the Hamlin thing. The NFL has always managed to figure something out in the past, but that perfect storm of timing and uncertainty highlights that you can’t always count on scrambling to squeeze in a game and get a bonus TV payday on a random weekday.