NFL Injuries Lead to Hand-Wringing, Finger-Pointing and Confusion

The new turf at MetLife Stadium is also a suspect in this week’s injury mystery, with 49ers players referring to it after Sunday’s game as “sticky” and “trash.” Subtle defects in a playing surface can have a major impact on elite athletes performing at peak capacity and effort, which explains why the Jets weren’t affected.

The N.F.L. is reportedly investigating the MetLife situation in advance of Sunday’s 49ers-Giants game. If the turf really does exacerbate injuries, the 49ers may have to call Joe Montana and Jerry Rice out of retirement to get them through the season.

While Sunday’s list appears unusually long, the inclusion of big names often turns injuries into a bigger story than the typical weekly rundown of battered offensive linemen and backups. The losses of Barkley and McCaffrey, in particular, were a major blow to millions of fantasy football enthusiasts. Forget the 49ers or Broncos: The real crisis this week is that your cousin Carmine’s Metuchen Murder Hornets will use up all of their fantasy waiver points.

This year’s N.F.L. injury uptick even appears to be slightly behind schedule. There’s typically an annual outcry to curtail or eradicate the preseason in mid-August, at the precise moment when a handful of noteworthy preseason injuries dovetails with midday television sports-talk hosts’ mounting boredom with training camp news.

In past years, the same players hurt on Sunday might have gotten hurt weeks earlier in a game that didn’t even count to his team’s record. That wouldn’t have made their injuries less devastating, personally or to their franchises, but that timing would also have made the news less immediate and dramatic.

The simple truth is that most football injuries are not caused by disruptions in conditioning routines or the friction coefficient of the playing surface, but by huge men crashing at full speed into one another. Lock, for example, was hurt when Pittsburgh Steelers defender Bud Dupree slammed his shoulder to the ground. Bosa’s leg twisted at an unnatural angle when he was driven backward by a blocker onto a pile. Nothing that happened in June or August could really have protected them.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/sports/football/nfl-injuries-week-2.html