First off: what a weird day to be a part of MCM. That's about all I've got to say on the matter. In any case, on to your regularly scheduled post. So far, the Titans' injury prevention has been fantastic. Consider this: other than Ryan Mouton whose season came to an incredibly early end, there don't appear to be any very serious injuries plaguing the team right now. Right now on CBS, there are four players on the injury report: Kenny Britt (hamstring), Jason Jones (knee), Sen'Derrick Marks (shoulder), and Javon Ringer (hip). Even though Jones' injury will keep him out for the entire preseason, all of these players should be good to go before the first regular season game.
Consider the bad luck of some other teams.
The Giants have now lost their top two draft picks this year. Prince Amukamara is out until mid season with a foot injury and defensive tackle and MCM darling Marv Austin will miss the entire year after tearing a pectoral muscle in the New York's domination of Chicago the other night. What makes New York's situation unique is that these two rookies are at an even bigger disadvantage than they would have been in most other situations. In the case of Amukamara, he missed nearly a full week of training camp after an ugly holdout at the beginning of the year. Not only has he missed time in camp because of this holdout, but now he'll be missing a huge chunk of time developing his skills. When he finally returns to action, he'll have to be thrown right into the fire of practice, if not game action. Prince is a very skilled player, but losing two months of your rookie season is no joke.
Marv Austin is in an even worse situation. His season-long suspension from last year basically means that he's got two weeks of actual football under his belt in the last two years. As is the case with Prince, Marv is very talented, but this isn't going to be an easy transition into the NFL for him. You may recall Derrick Morgan losing most of his rookie year last year and how poorly we reacted to it. Morgan was the reigning conference player of the year and, obviously, had a great deal of game experience. With the knee injury, we still don't really know if he's the same player that Mikey and the boys drafted last year. I don't really get the feeling it'll ruin his career, but it's still something to think about. Now imagine how NY feels. This time next year, they'll have a guy who hasn't played football in two years with a surgically repaired pec muscle ready to start at DT.
As of today, I think we're all caught up on our Peyton Manning neck injury news, so I'll keep it brief. The Colts have signed Kerry Collins out of retirement because that's how desperate things are looking right now. Bummer dude. (not really)
Remember Mikel Leshoure? Well, he's a startlingly large list of players who have lost their seasons to Achilles injuries. In the first two weeks of training camp, no fewer than ten Achilles muscle injuries ended the seasons of players everywhere. Two happened here in Tennessee. In the entire 2010 preseason, training camp and all, Football Outsiders shows that there were a total of nine Achilles injuries. That's really kind of a shocking statistic when you think about it. While I'm praying for a speedy recovery, I'm also thankful that it didn't happen to any of the Titans' big impact players. While it's too early to draw a direct correlation to the shortened training camp and large amounts of serious injuries, signs that the two may be connected are there. The good news to take away from all of this is that for now, Tennessee has been blessed by the injury gods and are more or less healthy nearly two weeks from the season opener.