Deshaun did so many good things from the pocket last year. I really feel like he won't digress much at all when the athletic ability leaves his body.
Around the 19:00 mark https://audioboom.com/posts/6633264-super-bowl-mvp-von-miller-luke-kuechly-and-deshaun-watson-2-1-3 Deshaun says: 1) He was taking reps with the first team in training camp. (Media was saying he didn’t get many first team reps, which wasn’t true.) 2) He says, "I truly wasn’t prepared to take that next step right out the gate. OB knew it, Rick Smith knew it, and I agreed." (Remember that story about Rick not wanting Watson to start game one? Why was he in that discussion?) From week 1 of training camp, O’Brien was walking around saying Watson was going to take this team to a Super Bowl one day. 3) The sucking up from Florio is sickening. 4) Repeated that he thinks his ACL happened vs. SEA. 5) Selling Old Spice. 6) "Great to have [O’Brien] back"… "I love watching Brady and hearing the stories and seeing how he got to where he is now." (Osweiler didn’t think there was anything for him to learn from Tom Brady.)
You really can't trust the narratives that emanate from the local sports talkers. So that story was true then, because O'Brien obviously thought he was ready 30 minutes later. And he was talking during camp like he wasn't going "to be here" after the season.
I have my fingers crossed for DeShaun but this is the same medical staff that let JJ come back from back surgery after only 12 weeks and we all know how that turned out.
Yes, that was the knee injury he suffered in the Kansas City game last year. I'm referring to his surgery for a herniated disk in June 2016 which was his 2nd back surgery that year. He was back playing by Sept only to wind up on IR and shutdown for the season. This led me to become skeptical about the medical staff and now it appears that they maybe doing the same thing with Watson. Everything depends on him being ready to play when the season starts for them to even have a remote chance of making the playoffs.
But... because of a leg injury; it had nothing to do with his back. This is like bringing your car in to have the engine worked on and then blaming the mechanic for a flat tire. Also, we need to stop pretending medical personnel are all-knowing magicians - there's only so much they can do. Their methods could conceivably be suspect, I suppose - but unless you think they're fudging or outright ignoring medical and physical results, he passed their tests and received clearance to play. It's then on JJ to manage his pain and what he can and cannot handle. They can't do that for him.
Jeez! The level of reading comprehension around here is not good. I wasn't talking about JJ's tibial plateau fracture that happened in 2017. I was looking at his 2nd back surgery that occurred in June 2016. The two events are/were not related. JJ has back surgery #2 in June but 12 weeks later is declared ready to go. That struck me as somewhat of a rush job to get him back on the field and sure enough, by Sept 27th, he ended up needing back surgery again and wound up being placed on IR thereby missing the rest of the 2016 season. Now we have Watson suffering his 2nd torn ACL and my worry is that they are doing the same thing with him as they did with JJ. Too much rests on him for them to get it wrong..again.
Ah, gotcha. My bad. My second point still stands, though- if he passes their milestones and tests, the burden is passed to him to properly manage his pain and recovery. The doctors can't walk a mile in his shoes.
