A rant about the RG3 injury

It’s easy to second guess all of the decisions made by both Shanny and RG3 with regard to the QB’s injury, which might keep him out for at least a year. However, I’m going to try to go back in time while filtering out what did happen and instead focus on what could have and should have happened in response to his injuries.

In the Baltimore game, RG3 played only a handful of snaps after his injury. It was easy to decide when he should have come out of the game. I see no problem in the way Shanny or RG3 handled that situation. RG3 tried to go, but it was obvious that he couldn’t. And, his youthful exuberance allowed him to sneak in those couple of plays after he was hurt.

But, in the playoff game, things are a little murkier. Here’s where I’m going to go back in time and attempt to filter out the hindsight that is provided when one looks back into the past. Someone once said that when we look back at history, it is quite difficult for us humans to be able to dissect past events and conjure up different ways that history could have actually played itself out. For a radical example, many cannot fathom or even contemplate the fact that Hitler didn’t have to rise to power, kill six million innocents and almost bring civilization to its knees. Hitler could have been and should have been foiled at hundreds of steps along the road he traveled to gain power in Germany and then carry out his fascist plans to attempt to take over the world. But, it wasn’t inevitable that he wrestled control over the government of Germany. He could have been stopped in 1939, but he wasn’t. The bottom line is that the history that we remember and read about wasn’t inevitable. History happens because too many of us let it happen.

So, what does that analogy have to do with the RG3 injury context? Well, too many people let the injury scenario play itself out without being proactive enough to change the course of history. Dr. Andrews could have stepped in and told Shanny that it was his professional opinion that RG3 risked permanent injury after he saw RG3’s knee buckle on the end zone throw to Garcon during the playoff game. Shanny saw the knee buckle also. He could have and should have pulled him out right then. But, he didn’t. Why? Well, to me, we need to go back to that point in time while filtering out the hindsight that we gained by watching history play itself out.

So, what do we suppose that Shanny was thinking at that point when RG3’s knee buckled on the throw to Garcon? I believe that he watched the play unfold in front of him and then watched the replay on the stadium screen and thought deeply about what his next move should be. We have to understand that Shanny has been coaching for decades at the highest level of pro football. He’s seen dozens of players get hurt and still play. Notice that I said hurt, not injured. It’s usually obvious when a player is injured. He gets carted off of the field and goes to the hospital. Obviously, RG3 was hurt, but was he injured? I don’t think that Shanny knew the answer to that question.

The obvious example that Shanny was living with every week for several weeks was the health of London Fletcher. Fletcher was so hurt that he couldn’t practice at all during the week. However, he came out every Sunday and still played at a pro bowl level. He was obviously hurt. But, he was able to play through the pain and perform his duties.

So, I believe that Shanny’s decision making was skewed in the direction of determining the fine line between being hurt and being injured, and decided that RG3 was hurt, but not hurt bad enough to impair his play making ability.

Then, once he made that decision, it was easy for him to allow RG3 to stay in the game. He only had to look back one week and remember how impaired RG3 was in the Dallas game but also how well he threw from the pocket. RG3 won the Dallas game while playing hurt. I believe that Shanny believed that RG3 could do the same thing in the playoff game. In fact, why would he think any differently? Football players play hurt. That’s what they do. That’s why they make millions of dollars to play a silly game. We fans admire those who take a risk, who play hurt, who put everything on the line. And, we abhor the thought of anyone taking himself out of the game because he is hurt. We expect the player to only come out when he has to be carted off of the field or when the coach decides to pull him because he is ineffective. The player never comes off willingly.

I remember what happened to players who unilaterally decided that they were hurt enough to take themselves out of the game. I remember LT taking himself out of a playoff game a couple of years ago. The coach didn’t like LT’s decision. And, the fans went crazy. They let it be known that LT should have played through whatever health problem he had.

The same thing happened to Jay Cutler. He decided that he wasn’t helping the team because his back was acting up a little. So, he took himself out of the game. The fans went crazy again. It took Cutler a year to recover his reputation.

So, players have learned that there is an unwritten code that decrees that thou shall not come out of a game unless they carry you out.

And, coaches buy into this philosophy by embracing it as their own. Successful coaches and players know that they must buy into these “truths” and not waiver, either in action or spoken word.

So, was Shanny right in the way he handled the RG3 injury? No, obviously not. But, I think that if we can enable ourselves to go back in time and put ourselves into the environmental context in which the players and coaches live, we might have made the same decisions.

But, we really cannot know what we would have done if we were faced with similar decision making scenarios in real time and needed to make decisions which affect hundreds of people.

We can feel that we would do the right thing. But, we must walk in those shoes and have to make those decisions on the spot before we know how we would have performed.

In hindsight, it’s obvious that Shanny made the wrong decisions. Andrews wasn’t forceful enough in letting Shanny know that RG3 needed to come out. RG3’s youthful exuberance clouded his judgment so much that he made several bad decisions.

But, do you think that you would have done better?