It came as a surprise this week when Josh Jacobs announced on social media that he had been playing with a fracture in his shoulder since the Green Bay game on October 20.
Since the injury, Jacobs has not appeared to play in pain so it was a bit of a surprise when he was ruled out for Sunday’s pivotal game against the Titans. Cameras caught Jacobs crying on the sideline before the game and Gruden announced later that it was the team’s decision to hold the rookie running back out of his first game since the injury.
There haven’t been a lot of details about Jacobs injury, but the feeling had been that if Jacobs was able to play through the pain to this point, he would most likely be available again on Sunday. But that wasn’t the case and renowned Dr. David Chao questioned on Monday if there might be more to Jacobs’ injury than the team and player have been letting on.
Appearing on SiriusXM NFL Radio’s Movin’ the Chains, Dr. Chao had the following to say about Jacobs and his mysterious injury:
“This one doesn’t fully make sense. The report is it’s a should blade or shoulder plate or scapula fracture. No question those are very painful especially in the first couple of weeks. This was a week seven injury against the Packers where he came back in the same game. That’s how tough he is and he hasn’t missed any time since. Yes, there have been many times he’s been limited in practice, but he has played all the games. He played the previous five games across the last seven weeks without missing any time and then all off a sudden this last week he was DNP on Wednesday and Thursday and out of this game. So to me that means something happened in week 13. I don’t have any reports of that. I don’t see any video of that. But how does an injury that you’ve played through for the last six weeks, that quite honestly should be better by 4-6 weeks, all of a sudden get worse on the seventh week and for the first time you don’t practice and now you’re out. So there’s more to come on that whole story I think.”
For what it’s worth, Dr Chao was a former team doctor in the NFL for more than 17 years and is one of the most respected medical minds in the industry. It will be interesting to see what details on Jacobs injury, if any, come to light in the weeks ahead. Hopefully there isn’t any long-term damage that’s been done to Jacobs shoulder because he’s been by far the league’s most impressive offensive rookie this year. No question he’s as valuable to the team as any player on the roster moving forward.
twitter: @raidersbeat
