Kirk Cousins dropped back, staggered, lurched forward and crumbled to the grass at Lambeau Field.
Just another sad Sunday in the NFL.
Several QBs have suffered debilitating injuries despite the league’s repeated efforts to create less-hazardous conditions at the sport’s most important position.
The grim diagnosis on Cousins was confirmed Monday: a torn Achilles tendon has ended the season of the Vikings’ most indispensable player.
Before the cart rolled for him, Cousins was having perhaps his best season. He was coming off one of the better games in his career, yielding an upset of the 49ers, and the Vikings (4-4) were rounding into form.
Now for coach Kevin O’Connell — the longtime Carlsbad resident who quarterbacked La Costa Canyon High School and San Diego State — it’ll be a long reach to contend for a wild card spot, much less the NFC North title.
O’Connell’s expertise gleaned from former mentors Tom Brady, Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay may go only so far minus Cousins, who stood third in passer rating and fifth in touchdown percentage.
Aaron Rodgers and the Jets can relate.
On Rodgers’ fourth snap of this season, his Achilles was torn, rapidly depreciating the Jets’ massive investment of premium draft picks and a huge chunk of the salary cap.
The Jets (4-3) have hung around behind their feisty defense.
But as they chase the AFC East-leading Dolphins, they’re swimming against a riptide in the form of subpar quarterbacking from Zach Wilson. An erratic performer whose struggles led to multiple benchings and the trade for Rodgers, the 24-year-old Wilson stands 29th in passer rating, 28th in ESPN’s quarterback rating and 26th in sack percentage.
The Browns (4-3) won’t be sending the Jets a sympathy card.
Beset by poor judgment and bad luck at QB in most years since San Diego State alum Brian Sipe won the league’s 1980 MVP award for them, the Browns are down to their third-string QB.
They mortgaged a big chunk of their future, to say nothing of their soul, to sign star QB Deshaun Watson, only to see a shoulder injury either sideline or hinder him since Week 3.
Don’t we know it, say the AFC’s Steelers, Raiders and Titans after having shelved starting QBs Kenny Pickett, Jimmy Garoppolo and Ryan Tannehill because of injury.
For the Bears, QB luck tends to range from bad to putrid.
Justin Fields, who wasn’t looking like the answer but was a dangerous runner, suffered a thumb fracture in what is a critical season for the Bears to evaluate their 2022 first-round pick.
So Chicago’s past two starts have gone to Tyson Bagent, an undrafted rookie. A year ago he was throwing passes for the Shepherd University Rams, a small liberal arts school in Shepherdstown, West Virgiania.
Of course, there’s one team that doesn’t belong on this gruesome list.
Yes, the Shamrock Chargers remain cocooned, alone, enveloped in bubble wrap, relative to the other 31 clubs the past 17-plus years.
Not only has the franchise lucked into drafting two future top-10 QBs the past two decades with no gaps in between, it has been untouched by debilitating injury at the position in the aftermath of Philip Rivers suffering a torn ACL in the playoffs 15 years ago.
Rivers, with an assist from team physician Dr. David Chao, was able to play all of the AFC title game that followed. He never missed a start dating to the 2006 opener, when he succeeded Drew Bress.
Justin Herbert took the baton from Rivers and has been available for all 58 starts, sitting out the 2020 opener only because coach Anthony Lynn went with stop-gap veteran Tyrod Taylor. Herbert has finished all his starts despite suffering torn ribcage last year and a broken left middle finger last month.
History shows the Chargers will collect a handful of victories every year soley because of the massive lopsideness in aptitude at QB.
They’ve gathered two of them this year: against the Raiders, who pressed rookie Aidan O’Connell (fourth round, Purdue) into his first NFL start because of Garoppolo’s injury; and the Bears, who started Bagent Sunday night in the Kroenke Dome.
The Chargers (3-4) stand to collect two more such victories soon. They’re three-point favorites for Monday night’s game against Wilson and the Jets in New Jersey. Look for them to be favored two weeks later at Green Bay. The Packers’ QB Jordan Love, a first-year starter, is 27th in interception percentage and 28th in passer rating.
Meantime, NFL media partners will continue to describe the Chargers as a franchise beset by injury misfortune. This is next-level mythmaking, considering that Team Spanos has had an above-average QB available for some 200 consecutive starts, playoffs included, coming into this week. It’s like complaining about a broken water heater or leaky roof as neighbors’ homes in other communities are destroyed by mudslides, floods and fires.
Sounding Off
There’s one simple reason the Bengals (4-3) have climbed into the Super Bowl race. QB Joe Burrow has recovered from a calf injury.
The Steelers’ Pickett, 25, appears unlikely to hold up physically, game in and game out. Already, the second-year first-round draftee has been sidelined by multiple concussions, plus injuries to his shoulder and ribs.
Circle the Nov. 12 matchup in Jacksonville between the 49ers, coming off a bye, and the surging Jaguars. If All-Pro LT Trent Williams is back to full speed, make the Niners a slight favorite.
Brandon Staley needs to figure out how the Broncos were able to contain Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the rest of the Chiefs’ offense, leading to Sunday’s upset victory. Denver’s D is less talented, for sure, than the healthy Chargers D that allowed the Chiefs 24 points and 331 yards in the first half the previous week.
How’s this for a football fantasy: newly minted billionaire Taylor Swift marries Kelce, buys the Chargers and moves them where they belong.
