Yawn, right? Right.
Welcome to the obligatory, contractually obligated post in which I tell you that the most important injury during Championship Sunday has reached its inevitable pre-game conclusion, one that we saw coming on Monday. John Abraham is officially active.
As we recover from the greatest football day ever in the history of football days and get ready for hopefully another such day starting shortly, here’s a quick injury note for the supporters of the Dirty Birds.
John Abraham is officially active, which isn’t exactly shocking stuff after he practiced all week in some capacity. But after the great Christian Ponder incident of Wild Card Weekend, we can never be too sure. Also, Abraham was listed as questionable after suffering an ankle injury during Atlanta’s meaningless regular-season finale two weeks ago, which left some lingering doubt.
Go here for the rest of the details on PONDER WATCH 2013 (!). Now it’s official, and Christian Ponder is inactive for the Vikings’ wildcard game tonight against Green Bay, and Joe Webb — who was on the field for all of three snaps throughout the regular season — will replace him. The decision likely came down to the very last minute.
This may actually help Adrian Peterson, and by extension the Vikings’ offense. It’s no secret what Webb does: he runs, and often for great distances. In 17 game appearances over three years, Webb has 273 rushing yards. At first that doesn’t impress you, but then you’ll look a little further and realize that of those game appearances, only three of them were starts. Yeah, this dude is fast, and last year he had 109 yards on the ground against the Lions.
Welp, bring the pain then.
Bengals safety Chris Crocker injured his quadriceps a week ago in what was pretty much a meaningless game, and he was listed as doubtful yesterday. So no, his inactive status isn’t a surprise, as it was pretty much a formality at this point. But it still brings a lot of suck to the Bengals’ defensive backfield.
Now the task of sticking with Owen Daniels downfield and helping with bracket coverage on Andre Johnson belongs to some combination of Nate Clements and Taylor Mays. It’ll likely be Clements, who was benched at midseason following a failed conversion to safety.
Say, have I mentioned yet that playing fantasy football in Week 17 is an awful idea? What? I’ve written that in every post so far today?
While I realize that for the truly addicted watching fantasy season end is akin to knowing that you won’t see your best friend again for five years while he takes little more than a jar of peanut butter to “find himself” in Malaysia, it’s better to just let go. Be Rose on the Titantic, and watch as Week 17 falls to its icy death. If you truly, really need to scratch that fantasy football itch, start investing time and energy into next year. Hey, it’s never too early, and while we’ll turn our attention to the real-life playoffs around here over the next month, plenty of 2013 projections and 2012 lamenting will still appear on this web blog. I don’t really know what a “life” is either, so don’t worry.
We’ve already told you about the difficulties of meaningless or nearly meaningless games, and the tough roster decisions that follow for those of you whose obsession has necessitated a Week 17 championship. But below among the notable early game actives/inactives you’ll see that the final-week abyss has engulfed one of your depth options too.
This is only mildly surprising, as many positive words have been said and written about Ahmad Bradshaw’s injury status after he practiced Friday. Following that it felt like he had about a 70-ish percent chance of playing, and those odds increased when he told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols yesterday that he’d be on the field against Baltimore.
But yes, now he’s officially active, although that doesn’t change my stance from earlier on the sit/start decision you had to make at noon involving the Giants’ running back since today’s 11 early afternoon games are now reaching their conclusion. Bradshaw will play, but we still can’t be confident in his workload, how heavy it will be, and how much David Wilson will eat into a hobble RB’s carries.
There’s still a very real possibility that Wilson gets 8-10 carries, and in that scenario Bradshaw would have to either score, or break off a major run to have significant fantasy value. Sitting him was the right call.
We will never speak of Robert Griffin III’s knee injury again until the end of humanity.
Yesterday Griffin passed his final test when he was cleared by team doctors, and he’s now jogging around the field in Philadelphia during warm-ups and looking very Robert Griffin III-like. Yeah, you should probably start him.
He leads our early-game actives/inactives due to a contractual obligation. The pickings, they’re a little slim right now, but as always your pre-game workout will be refreshing this page. We’ll be updating this post as more inactives begin trickling out in mere minutes.
