On Monday, it was easy to find out that Saints tight end (receiver) Jimmy Graham was having an MRI on his injured foot.
Then, it became impossible to find out anything about what the Saints found out about the foot.
And so I applied the “no news is bad news” adage to Graham on Monday night’s edition of Pro Football Talk on NBCSN, pointing out that teams and sources close to players often clam up when the prognosis is negative, since that gives the team some time to make a contingency plan before the leverage completely evaporates.
In this case, the news may not be bad. Chris Mortensen of ESPN reports that “there is a sense of optimism” that Graham will be able to play when the Saints emerge from their Week Seven bye to play the Bills in Week Eight.
Though it’s good to have tangible information about Graham’s foot, we’re not sure that “a sense of optimism” is all that tangible. At times, there’s a fine line between optimism and delusion -- especially in the NFL, where strategic considerations can prompt folks to say something other than the truth.
Mortensen also says that Graham is still having the foot evaluated, but there’s no mention of the MRI or the results of it.
The Saints have no obligation to disclose anything about Graham until the time comes to issue injury reports in advance of the team’s next game. The question becomes whether the Saints will be able to plug any internal leaks, and in turn whether they’ll be able to persuade sources close to Graham to maintain silence, or at least something close to it.
Or, possibly, to perpetrate a sense of optimism that may not actually exist.