Oakland Raiders Tyvon Branch carted off field

Oakland Raiders strong safety Tyvon Branch is one of the more underrated players in the league at the position, and he means quite a bit to the Raiders defense. Not only is he a good leader at the back end of the secondary, but he’s also good in run support and has the physicality to lock up with tight ends in coverage. When the Raiders lost him for just about the entire 2013 season with an injury in Week 2 (the Raiders didn’t place him on the IR until Week 15, because he meant so much to them that they weren’t willing to give up on his season), they immediately suffered a massive downgrade in the secondary.

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Today, Branch has gone down again, as the Boston Herald’s Jeff Howe reports that Branch has been carted off into the locker room with an unknown injury. The Raiders are currently down 13-9 in a close battle with the Patriots, but we’ll see if losing a key player takes some wind out of their sales.

It seems like Branch always saves his best for the Pats, because he was playing at a high level today. With ten tackles (seven of them solo), Branch was making plays all over the field before being hauled off during a commercial break, and a lengthy spell on the sidelines would be a huge blow. This is the guy, after all, who shut down Rob Gronkowski a couple of years ago in one of the best games we’ve seen a strong safety play in man-to-man coverage.

Update: The Raiders have announced that Branch is dealing with a foot injury and is questionable to return, so at least he hasn’t been ruled out of the game or ruled doubtful to return. That said, I never trust the Raiders with injury statuses, because they tried to BS us into thinking Maurice Jones-Drew had a shot at playing in Week 2 after laughably listing him as questionable despite needing a procedure on his hand (he isn’t playing today either).