NFL injuries are nothing new, but when superstars are lost for the season, fans must take stock. Multiple stars have gone down, but whose injury is worse? Odell Beckham Jr. or Derek Carr?
Injuries always derail teams’ seasons in the NFL. In fact, the general term “injuries” may be the most decisive thing in determining a champion each and every season. Winning teams stay healthy; injured teams don’t win. From there, the rest is random small-sample luck.
A number of teams were felled by insanely vital injuries these past two weeks. All of these teams in question were playoff contenders prior to the season. (They weren’t all in that discussion when the injury took place, but still.) Which NFL injury is most damning to this team’s immediate future?
Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem, debate NFL Injuries in today’s NFL Sports Debate.
The injured star players:
Derek Carr – Oakland Raiders
Marcus Mariota – Tennessee Titans
Odell Beckham Jr. – New York Giants
JJ Watt – Houston Texans
Todd Salem
There have been many more injuries this year, but these are the top four from Weeks 4 and 5. Mariota is the least injured of this bunch but the most injury-prone. He should return in the next week or so. Carr should be back sometime this fall, perhaps as soon as Week 6. Beckham and Watt are out for the year.
The Raiders were shaky even when Carr was in there and appear inept without him. They have a pretty favorable schedule coming up though. They at least have a chance of defeating the Chargers next week sans Carr, as well as Buffalo and Miami in three and four weeks time, respectively. At that point, if Carr isn’t ready, Oakland is doomed. They don’t feel currently doomed, though.
Tennessee is in an even better spot schedule-wise, Mariota could return any week now, and the Titans could win any of their next six games without him. In fact, this squad probably has one of the easiest remaining schedules in the NFL. Of course, opponents may say that about facing the Titans if they don’t get their running game back in order.
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Beckham is out for the year, but it technically doesn’t matter. The Giants are finished regardless. They are also unwatchable without OBJ, if that factors into this. Their season from hell has now ventured somewhere worse: uninteresting in all manner.
Ranking Watt on this list is tricky. He is the best defensive player in football but arguably the least valuable of this foursome. His team has a surprisingly good offense and hasn’t relied on its defense to win, even when Watt was in there. And yet, the Texans are routinely getting shredded defensively. The lone exception was Week 4 against a partially Mariota-less Tennessee team.
My choice is Derek Carr. His team can’t do anything offensively without him and doesn’t have the personnel and/or execution to win games on the other side of the ball. Tennessee at least has its running game to fall back on (though Mariota is a part of that), and Houston has this suddenly potent offense it never had before.
Dan Salem
Injuries make or break teams every NFL season, but the number of high caliber injuries this year feels uncanny so early on. Many teams have lost their superstar players. The four lost stars you identified are certainly the most crucial losses, but when determining the injury with the greatest impact, we must evaluate which player was “Most Valuable” to his team’s success.
Without even reading the names, my first instinct is to pick a quarterback. Derek Carr is the easy answer, but the wrong one this season. His loss last year certainly set the Oakland Raiders back, and they are not the same team without him. But Oakland feels okay without him in 2017. The defense is just as good and the offense still has all of those skill players to work with. The Raiders backup quarterback is not as good as Carr, don’t get me wrong, but Carr is not quite as valuable to his team as Odell Beckham Jr. was to the New York Giants.
New York has no running game. Its defense is good but not great in terms of scoring points on its own. The only thing going for the Giants was the dominance of Beckham. Teams had to double cover him and could never leave him free in zone coverage. This created opportunities for every other Giants receiver. New York was terrible without Beckham on the field. As he worked his way back from injury and into the offense, New York actually started to score points. Now with him sidelined for the season, Eli Manning and the Giants have lost their only real weapon.
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Beckham’s absence means there is no one on New York’s offense for opposing defenses to fear. The Giants now have an aging veteran quarterback behind a porous offensive line, with solid receivers who likely struggle to get open and a sputtering run game. Beckham changed all of that. He was New York’s MVP. Now the Giants may go winless, because their schedule is brutal and they’ve lost their best player.
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