Adding literal injury to the insult of losing to an electrifying backup QB in Jake Browning on Monday night at home, the Jacksonville Jaguars saw the face of their franchise, Trevor Lawrence, get rolled up on by his own left tackle and knocked out of the Jags’ overtime loss to the Bengals.
It was really hard to watch this in real time. When Lawrence slammed his hand into the turf, projectile launched his helmet off and immediately appeared to be suppressing tears, I felt a pit in my stomach. As I’m sure all of EverBank Stadium did.
At least the initial diagnosis offers some encouragement, as Lawrence may have only escaped with an ankle sprain:
…But of course, it depends how severe the sprain is and how much time the superstar signal-caller might miss. The Jaguars are suddenly only one game clear in the AFC South of the 7-5 Colts and Texans. Raise your hand if you saw that coming before the season, considering Indy drafted Anthony Richardson fourth and Houston got CJ Stroud with the second pick. Two rookie-led teams with winning records at this stage of the year? No way! Richardson has been out for a long time, too!
Anyway, back to Lawrence and some of the discourse surrounding him: I’m no doctor, but I’m certain Jacksonville’s inability to fetch Lawrence a cart as he left the field and went down the tunnel to the locker room didn’t help put the minds of aggrieved spectators at ease.
…And it turns out, the reaction was fairly extreme from some corners of the X football community.
I guess I was kind of on board with that train of thought, considering how much it looked like Lawrence was struggling. Dude is pretty tough and nimble of foot. To see him hobbling and moving that slowly was unpleasant.
An actual doctor had a different take on the situation, though. Probably a more sensible assessment, but what does he really know? He only has the handle @ProFootballDoc!
Then of course, there’s also this, shout out ESPN’s Bengals reporter Ben Baby for the info:
Might be as simple as Lawrence shrugging off the cart. Whatever the case, everyone is rightly concerned about what happened to him. As happy as Bengals fans are about this improbable win, it sucks to see a QB go down. Cincinnati lost Joe Burrow for the rest of the season. Not everyone has a stone-cold killer like Jake Browning as a QB2.
The reality is, the NFL is better with as many healthy, high-quality QBs as possible. Lawrence has managed to stay on the field for his entire NFL career to date, not missing a single start in nearly three seasons. He’s played through injuries before. Let’s hope he can get his body right enough to only be out a week or two at most.
You’d hate to see such a fun AFC South race and the fight for the No. 1 seed largely determined on an injury.
