NFL Nfl Injuries

The Giants announced in a press release today that linebacker Michael Boley had arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn labrum in his hip and is likely to miss 8-to-10 weeks as he recovers. That obviously means Boley won't be ready for the start of training camp, and it throws into doubt his availability for the start of the regular season. But the hilarious way in which the Giants constructed this press release was designed to make sure you know that they don't consider this a very big deal at all.

The release is titled "Giants Rookie Signings; Boley Surgery." The first three paragraphs announce the signings of third-round pick Ramses Barden and fifth-round pick Rhett Bomar. Then, out of nowhere comes the totally unrelated fourth paragraph:

It would have been nice if, after the Raiders selected wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey with the seventh-overall pick in April's draft, the talented but raw Maryland product quietly went about proving his critics wrong.

Instead, he suffered a hamstring injury two weeks after the draft (speed kills, apparently), which made it easy for detractors to point out that Michael Crabtree or Jeremy Maclin -- two receivers everybody but Al Davis had rated higher than Heyward-Bey -- might have been better choices.

Then again, Davis loves the vertical passing game, and to pull it off you need a strong-armed quarterback and a receiver who can blow past defenders. JaMarcus Russell was an obvious choice for the former, and of all the available pass catchers in the 2009 draft, Heyward-Bey made too much sense (at least from Al's perspective) for the latter.

Perhaps the Saints should stop looking at damaged goods to fix their weakside linebacker position?

In 2006, they brought in Anthony Simmons, a former Pro Bowler, to play there. It didn't matter that Simmons missed most of '04 and all of '05 with injury; he was supposedly healthy and low-risk/high-reward. He retired before his first game as a Saint ever came.

In '08, they brought in Dan Morgan, a former Pro Bowler. It didn't matter that Morgan had a list of concussions that would make Steve Young commiserate, as well as a partially torn Achilles tendon, the collaborative effects of which forced him to miss almost all of '06 and '07. He was supposedly healthy and low-risk/high-reward. He retired before his first game as a Saint ever came.

Morgan then unretired earlier this year and claimed that the Saints, who still had his rights, were getting a healthy and motivated player. On Monday, he retired. Again.

The Philadelphia Eagles have confirmed that running back Brian Westbrook will have surgery to remove bone spurs in his right ankle, and the necessary recovery time of 2-3 months means that he might miss all of training camp and the preseason. And that leads me to wonder whether Westbrook is done as a legitimate starting running back in the NFL.

For NFL players, there's an growing understanding that they are making a set of tradeoffs.

If they are good enough to stick around in the league for a while, they will get a massive amount of money -- like take-care-of-your-great-grandkids rich. But in return, they will have the life expectancy of an Alaskan crab fisherman.

One of the main explanations for that is that many players simply carry too much weight. It's hard to take a look at a Pat Williams or a Shaun Rogers and not think that they are simply bigger and bulkier than what a human heart can handle.

For all you chumps who enjoyed a Tom Brady-less 2008 New England Patriots team, I got some bad news for you: Dreamboat is back. And to hear Peter King write it (in between uncontrollable sobs of joy, surely), Tommy Terrific is better, faster, stronger, so on and so forth.

Last September, Brady's season ended after just 15 plays. The Chiefs' Bernard Pollard tackled him low and blew up his ACL in the process. Following knee surgery (and a couple subsequent procedures to deal with a staph infection), Brady spent the last seven months planning a marriage and plotting his comeback.

We haven't even gotten to training camp, but teams are already losing players for the 2009 season. Veteran 49ers cornerback Walt Harris tore his right ACL during practice on Tuesday and will likely miss the entire season, according to Matt Maiocco of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

The injury occurred when Harris got tangled up with the wide receiver Dominique Ziegler during a drill. The Niners aren't ready to rule him out for the entire campaign, but the odds are against seeing Harris on the field again this season. Or any season.

I've often argued -- unoriginally -- that, in general, NFL teams should avoid using first-round picks on running backs. Salary-cap friendly alternatives can often be found later in the draft, and other, harder-to-address needs -- like offensive line or wide receiver -- can be targeted in the early rounds.

There are exceptions: most recently Adrian Peterson, Steven Jackson and LaDainian Tomlinson. But the NFL scrap heap is littered with former first-round backs who never panned out. It's too early to classify Laurence Maroney as such, but his three-year career has, so far, been underwhelming.

Darrius Heyward-Bey was selected by the Oakland Raiders in the first round of the NFL draft for one reason: speed. The former Maryland wideout has tons of it, and while that may not be enough to justify his selection to anyone with a brain most people, it was enough for Al Davis.

Unfortunately, it appears Mr. Heyward-Bey's speed comes with a troublesome side effect: injury. That's right, DHB messed up his hamstring and sat out the final day of minicamp because he was "running too fast."

Hopefully for the Falcons, this will all be forgotten in two weeks, but first-round pick Peria Jerry injured his knee during Saturday morning's minicamp practice.

Jerry bumped knees with another player, then left the field under his own power. Trainers were taking a look at his knee and giving him some ice, they should know if it's a problem or, more likely, no big deal by the end of the day.

It's most likely just a bruise, but you have to get nervous anytime a player limps off during minicamp -- already the Patriots have lost one of their draft picks for the season with a torn ACL. If Jerry misses a couple of run-throughs while icing the knee, it's no big deal -- he's still around the team and is already starting to digest the playbook, but the Falcons can't have Jerry out with a significant injury -- he's too important to a very thin group of defensive tackles.