Josh Norman was fine playing through pain, he doesn’t mind taking the shot before the game and doing what he needs to do.
But he’s wondering if he can be as effective playing with a protective cast, after realizing how restricting it would be in practice Thursday.
“I didn’t think a hand injury would be that big. . . . I use it so much,” Norman said, via John Keim of ESPN.com. “Ninety-five percent of what I do is hand fights. So if you have one hand out of commission, it’s super hard. Playing with one hand and one hand at 80 percent? Geez.”
Norman injured his right wrist in the preseason, and aggravated it last week, when Ravens receiver Breshad Perriman fell on him. He said athletic trainers told him it was “heavily sprained.”
“It was like a thousand stinging bees all at once,” Norman said of the pain.
But beyond that will be his ability to jam receivers off the line of scrimmage, which is a large part of what he does best.
“That’s my game,” Norman said. “It’s going to be interesting to see this week how that affects us. But it’s my game and getting that ball out wherever I can. I like to go to my right; that’s my strong, dominant hand. So I guess have to be ambidextrous and go to the left and see if I can’t make plays there. That’s what I love to do, man, go for that football. That’s my M.O.
“I have to rely on my athletic ability a lot. Wherever I can steal an inch here or there with my hands, I’m gonna try. I won’t lie and say it’s easy because it’s not.”
Of course, Washington didn’t pay him $15 million a year to do easy things, either.