Raiders All-Pro tight end Brock Bowers is expected to miss some time after knee surgery on Tuesday, and according to Adam Schefter’s initial report on Wednesday, Bowers is only expected to miss “a game or two.”
But a day later, it sounds like “a week or two” will be the best-case scenario for Bowers’ return.
In a conversation with Pat McAfee on Thursday, Schefter said he didn’t know Bowers had been dealing with a knee issue for several weeks and seemed to take a little jab at Las Vegas media for their coverage of Bowers’ knee.
“I was unaware of some of these videos and him limping,” Schefter said on the Pat McAfee Show.
“I can tell you I covered the Denver Broncos for 16 years. If the star of their team, Shannon Sharpe, were out there hopping around on one leg with his knee all taped up, I’m just telling you, that would have meant more to me than anything else. I didn’t know about it until yesterday, so that’s the deal,” Schefter continued.
“The one to two-week projection is coming essentially from people around him. Okay, him and people around him. That’s what they believe. Now a player, a player’s family, they’re always going to downplay it because they’re going to want you to think he can come back sooner. He probably thinks he can come back in a week or two. That’s what he probably thinks. He wants to be there as soon as possible for his team and as soon as he can be on the field, he’s going to be. Is that going to be a week or two? Well, that may be what he thinks, but let’s see how it actually goes.”
“Even if he is back in a week or two, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a warrior, he gets back out there, he’s playing sooner than we thought. Is he going to be at full strength in a week or two? No, he’s not. That’s not practical or realistic. It’s going to take a little bit of time to get over that. How long? I don’t know. Every player is different. I don’t know the extent of the trim.”
Schefter’s comments on Bowers were notable for a few reasons.
First, it sounds like 1-2 weeks is the optimistic timeline for Bowers’ return, and it’s also interesting that Schefter acknowledged where he got his information.
The team obviously wasn’t Schefter’s source on Bowers’ timeline to return, and the Raiders could have an entirely different idea of when he might be back on the field.
And last but not least, how did it happen that no one covering the Raiders spent any significant amount of time talking about Bowers’ knee?
x: @raidersbeat