Seahawks starting running back Chris Carson suffered what coach Pete Carroll called a “significant” ankle injury late in last night’s win over the Colts, and the pain was clearly felt by his teammates.
The seventh-rounder was caught in a pile late last night and his leg bent at an angle legs don’t bend at. He was immediately placed in an air cast and he was carted off the field.
Via Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman expressed his disappointment for the seventh-round pick who had risen to the starting job, and expressed his frustration at the way such injuries are viewed.
“It’s devastating,” Sherman said. “This is really devastating. I think a lot of people, a lot of fans out there have looked at players less like people because of fantasy football and things like that. You go and say ‘oh, man this guy got hurt.’ But you aren’t thinking ‘hey man, this guy got hurt, he’s really physically hurt and he is going to take some time to recover and it’s probably going to affect his mental state and now he has a long rigorous rehab.’
“You are thinking ‘oh man, he’s messing up my fantasy team.’ They don’t care about how it affects your fantasy team because they are really players — this is real life. This is real life and this is their real job. that is affecting their well-being. Now your fantasy team may not win and hey, guess what? You’ll live the next day. This is their well-being. They may not ever get another shot. They may never get another down, another play.
“I think that is why it is so devastating for players.”
Sherman said he was hoping the injury wasn’t as serious as it looked on television (and it didn’t take many looks to realize it was bad), but he was still shaken.
“Just trying to be optimistic in this situation,” he said. “But it is terrible when you see things like that because we know the guys personally and a lot of times the fans know us from the surface and wear 32 and he is running the all and he is doing good for my fantasy team. But they don’t think about the effects that an injury will have to a guy’s mental capacity and his family and what his mom and girlfriend and wife might be going through.”
Players being commodified is nothing new in the NFL, an unfortunate side effect of the league becoming the size of business it is. But hearing the anguish of the players when it’s made manifest should help some realize the actual consequences of what they’re seeing on the screen.