Lost in yesterday’s 38-21 drubbing by the Atlanta Falcons, was the fact that at some point in the game, 80% of the Redskins starting offensive line was down with injuries.
Trent Williams, who suffered an undisclosed injury to his thumb during last week’s win over the New York Giants, was inactive after having surgery and is expected to miss the next month.
Left guard Shaun Lauvao played three snaps before suffering a season-ending ACL tear and leaving the field on a wheelchair.
Right tackle Morgan Moses went down with a knee injury of his own in the first quarter before returning to the game and is listed as day-to-day.
At his press conference this afternoon, Coach Jay Gruden announced right guard Brandon Scherff would miss the remainder of the season with a torn pectoral muscle.
Center Chase Roullier escaped the carnage and moved to right guard after Scherff went down, leaving ball-snapping duties to backup tackle Tony Bergstrom.
Unfortunately for the Redskins, there is no respite in sight until the offseason, whenever that may come.
After the Saints beat the Rams yesterday, it almost certainly eliminated any hope of Washington getting a first round bye to get healthy, should they hold on to win the NFC East and make the playoffs.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Redskins were dealt a critical blow to getting healthy in the second half of the season before playing a single down this year.
When the schedule was released in April, the Redskins and Carolina Panthers found their bye came four weeks into the season, meaning they would play thirteen consecutive weeks after returning from their bye.
No other major sport gives players time off as early or as late as the NFL, which scheduled byes from Week 4 to Week 12 during the 2018 season.
MLB takes a four-day break halfway through the season (July), while the NHL (January) and NBA (February) take a week off 60 percent of the way through their seasons.
Now it’s impossible to imagine the NFL taking an entire week off in the middle of the season – on or about Week 9 – like baseball, basketball and hockey do, but the league could do more to alleviate concerns that teams like the Redskins have.
When a bye week occurs early in the season, immense pressure is placed on coaches and players alike to pace themselves through a week of practices and then game day for an extended period of time without a rest.
Players complain. Coaches complain. No one is happy.
In addition, players who suffer injuries after an early bye usually spend the rest of the year trying to get healthy while playing through the pain, a recipe for disaster that usually leads to players having offseason surgery for worse injuries than the initial diagnosis they received during the season.
The fix is simple, stagger one team per division on a rotating byes from Week 7 to Week 10, meaning no team faces a bye before playing six games and no later than playing nine games.
The following season, a team that had a Week 7 bye would have a Week 8 bye and a team that sat out Week 10 would sit out Week 7.
It seems like a small price to play to make the game safer, keep players healthy and coaches happy.
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