NFL
teams are notoriously cautious about announcing injuries. No matter how
obvious a sprain or a tear may seem, they'll wait for a scan to
confirm. Not last night. It was mere minutes after Victor Cruz was
carted off that the Giants announced he had suffered a torn patella
tendon, and that nonexistent delay might have been the most disturbing
part; it meant that they had to do was look at Cruz's leg to see that
his kneecap was no longer in the right place.
The
game was already out of reach when Cruz went to the corner of the end
zone to attempt to haul in a floater. He had separation on Brandon
Boykin, but planted his right leg at an awkward angle before leaping off his left.
The ball bounced off his hands, and he clutched at his right knee
before he hit the ground, and if the NFL had Cruz wearing a microphone, here's hoping that footage never sees the light of day:
"As soon as he hit the ground and he was over there, he was over there really screaming, really screaming at the top of his lungs, I was trying to signal for somebody to come over," Boykin said. "When you do hear a professional NFL player scream like that, you know that it's a serious injury."
It was as serious as it sounded; the patellar tendon is, as you'd expect, an important one for an athlete. It's the ligament that attaches the kneecap to the tibia (or shinbone), and it's what allows you to straighten your knee. Cruz
is done for the year. He won't using that knee until December, and
depending on the severity of the tear, should just be getting back to
full speed around the time of next spring's OTAs.
Without
even knowing any of that, the players on the field and the fans in the
stands knew it was awful. There's something especially gruesome about a
non-contact injury in a contact sport—of all the injuries that are supposed to happen, this wasn't one. But according to Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka, it's a disturbingly regular scene.
"The sad thing about this game is that almost every week somebody's season is over," Kiwanuka said. "We don't really cover it as much. A lot of times you see a guy go down to the side of the field, you go to a commercial, you come back, but for us that's a member of our team that's gone, whether he's an undrafted free agent who's running down on kickoff or if he is one of the captains of our team."
If
you're looking for the Philadephia narrative, it wasn't here. Fans
cheered the dropped ball, but went to low murmurs when it became clear
that Cruz wasn't getting up, and to polite, encouraging applause as he
was carted off. (Even Michael Irvin knows the difference. Eagles fans
still carry a black eye from cheering as he was carted off with what
would be a career-ending neck injury, but Irvin has said, "Philly wasn't cheering my injury. They were cheering my departure.")
source:http://deadspin.com/victor-cruzs-injury-made-everyone-sad-1645649540
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