After you hear an NFL player or coach say “injuries are part of the game” you are certain to hear “injuries are no excuse” shortly thereafter.
That’s fair. They are all professionals. Even the back-up players are paid rather handsomely to play football so they should not make excuses.
But the fact is that all pro athletes are not created equal. That is why some players start ahead of others and why the best of the best are paid salaries beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals.
That’s why I have always felt that when a team is hit with an injury to even one key player it is not an excuse but an explanation as to why a team’s performance suffers. When it’s not just one key player, but ultimately four of them out of the line-up, it is reasonable to expect (to use a Tomlinism) that a team will struggle.
That, of course, is what happened to the Steelers defense against the Raiders when Joe Haden and Devin Bush were late scratches then Tyson Alualu and TJ Watt left the game early on. Minkah Fitzpatrick said what you’d expect him to say.
“To me, at least, that don’t matter,” the safety said matter of factly. “It’s football, it’s part of the game; people get injured, people get hurt. (Just) before the game we found out Joe wasn’t going to be playing but we gotta go out there and play ball. We can’t be worrying about who’s out there. We all play and practice throughout the week, we all gotta go out there and execute.”
Fitzpatrick took more than full responsibility - “on me 110 percent” – for giving up the 61 yard YD on a third-and-10 in the fourth quarter but relative newcomer Ahkello Witherspoon also appeared to be at fault on the play. Witherspoon may not have even seen the field had Haden been active.
Jamir Jones, in his second NFL game, would not have been pressed into action had Watt not pulled a groin. Melvin Ingram would have played fewer than 86 percent of the snaps and both he and Alex Highsmith would have been more fresh.
With Watt in the line-up maybe the Steelers wouldn’t have blitzed on that third-and-10 and had more guys deep or maybe watt wouldn’t have gotten to Derek Carr as he had earlier in the game. To some that sounds like an excuse but to me it’s more of an explanation.
Even Mike Tomlin - who is not in the excuse-making business – offered a post-game explanation. “I didn’t think we had enough detail or playmaking on possession downs,” he said Sunday. “A lot of that had to do with our inability to make plays in spots when attrition set it. Put that on me.
We’ve got to do a better job of planning and insulating some of our down the line guys and we’ve got to get them ready to play better.”
In the end, semantics don’t really matter. The Steelers defense is banged up. As Cam Heyward, who had to line up on the nose a few times, pointed out, “it’s not anything we can run from” so he says he will do his best to make sure his guys on the D-line will be ready, or at least as ready as they can be.