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The sky is blue, grass is green, and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel’s injured leg looks better today than it did last week.
Of course his leg looks better. You know what heals injuries? Time does.
Headlines tease fans informing us “Cassel Could Start,” only to discover an article that tells us, “He Could Not.”
We have an entire article devoted to stating the obvious. Cassel is hurt, Cassel is healing, and Cassel will play when he’s healthy. That’s the writer’s notes. What does head coach Todd Haley have to say? “I haven't talked to the doctors. But to my eye, he was improved some from last week.”
A sports injury does not spread like cancer, it heals like a scab. The healing is observable without medical instruments and the improved condition of Cassel comes as no surprise.
What would be nice is to know if he indeed will start, but for the second consecutive week fans are tormented with ambiguous articles featuring vague statements that leaves readers with only Cassel’s status as “questionable,” to appease our inquisitiveness.
Now these weekly updates of predictable healing doesn’t bother me as much as the incessant need to repeat the terms of Cassel’s new contract every time his injury is mentioned.
We get it! The Chiefs paid a lot of money and now the guy is hurt. It’s not the ideal situation, but fans learn to accept it and move on. Allow us to move on!
It’s wise to lock up big time talent and injuries cannot be predicted. It’s not like the Chiefs did anything wrong in this instance, so stop reminding us of just how unfortunate the situation is.
Forbid any player face a similar demise, but players like Gale Sayers, or Terrell Davis are certainly Hall of Fame caliber football players, whose careers were cut short by injury. Yet no team would hesitate to lock either up in a big contract as they hit their prime.
The subtle jabs over wasted money are gratuitous and Chiefs fans will not buy into the notion of spilt milk. With the team and the organization undergoing a reformation the true fan will not wilt under the “shame” of matters outside of anyone’s control.
It’s not like general manager Scott Pioli took a crowbar to Cassel’s knee a la Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan (I apologize for a figure skating reference in a football article, but a part of me feels Lynn Swann might be proud...even if ballet and figure skating aren’t quite the same).
No, Pioli did everything right, and the Chiefs are going about this the right way. This is a team positioning itself to be highly competitive and win some games.
The slight of infusing criticism into insufficient and predictable injury updates is tiresome and uncalled for.
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