Christian McCaffrey’s injury is a big deal for fantasy owners, but not for the Panthers
If I’m betting on how long Carolina Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey will be out due to this high-ankle sprain, I would take the under.
That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it? McCaffrey is either on your fantasy football team, which means you had the No. 1 overall pick, or more likely he’s on the fantasy football team of your frenemy. So I know this is a big deal to you.
I predict No. 22 will miss three weeks instead of the standard 4-to-6 week projection for a running back or wide receiver with a high-ankle sprain. In the meantime, Mike Davis will be a fine waiver-wire fantasy football pickup for somebody in your league.
In the real world, though, this injury won’t be a game-changer for either the Panthers this season or for McCaffrey’s long-term career — a good thing since he’s now the NFL’s highest-paid running back after signing a four-year, $64-million contract extension in April.
This injury isn’t nearly as significant, for instance, as Steve Smith’s broken leg in the first game of the 2004 Carolina season. That was also an injury to Carolina’s best offensive player. But that Panthers team was coming off a Super Bowl and, with Smith, had a chance to get there again.
Instead, without Smith for the final 15 games, the Panthers finished 7-9. Smith came back the next year to win the receiving triple crown and get Carolina back to 11-5, and I’d expect McCaffrey will return in a similarly spectacular way down the road.
As for the short term: This Panthers team, which has now lost 10 straight games (all with McCaffrey) dating back to Nov. 3rd, will simply lose some more and McCaffrey won’t get a second consecutive 1,000-1,000 season.
I still don’t think the Panthers will lose enough to “Tank for Trevor,” incidentally. But this team wasn’t going to the playoffs with or without No. 22 — although certainly you feel for McCaffrey to have to miss any time given how much he loves playing it.
“It sucks, to be 100 percent transparent,” McCaffrey said Monday of his injury, which was the first significant one of his NFL career. “Any time you get injured, it’s a horrible thing. You play football to play, not to sit out.”
McCaffrey has never missed a game since the Panthers drafted him at No. 8 overall in 2017, playing in 50 straight and getting steadily better every year. He’s so durable that it was always going to be a shock when he got hurt. But all running backs do at some point, and this is a manageable injury.
Adrian Peterson came back from a high-ankle sprain in 2011 to rush for 2,097 yards in 2012. NFL quarterbacks actually play through high-ankle sprains sometimes without missing any games since they don’t move as much. Peyton Manning did so in 2013 and won his fifth NFL MVP award.
This isn’t Saquon Barkley tearing his ACL Sunday with the New York Giants. That’s a career-threatening sort of injury for a running back; Barkley will return in 2021, but will he ever have exactly the same burst?
McCaffrey’s injury feels more like a temporary setback, one that we will all have forgotten one day in the distant future when McCaffrey has led the Panthers back into the playoffs. Yes, that will happen, just not anytime soon.
I do appreciate McCaffrey’s positive thinking. As my colleague Alaina Getzenberg pointed out, McCaffrey’s “there is still hope” message for the team that he decided to open his press conference with is the sort of move you want from him.
McCaffrey is still only 24, but he’s now a team captain who has helped fill the leadership void left when the Panthers showed Cam Newton and Greg Olsen the door in the offseason. He’s acting that way now, in a time of adversity, thinking about more than himself.
McCaffrey mentioned several times Monday how he is going to “attack his rehab.” Given McCaffrey’s work ethic means that while you are reading this he is undoubtedly somewhere doing something rehab-ish, simultaneously making you and I both feel guilty for not going to the gym enough.
If it’s a 4-6 week prognosis, McCaffrey will want to make it 2-3 weeks. I’ll guess it’s going to be three, and that McCaffrey returns for Carolina’s Oct. 18 home game vs. Chicago.
The idea of shutting McCaffrey down for the year, incidentally, is one that will have to be discussed with medical personnel. But I’m not in favor of it.
McCaffrey would hate it, for one, and even by doing so there’s no guarantee that a “Tank for Trevor” scenario — in which Carolina would lose enough to be able to draft Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence — would pan out. If he got hurt again, of course, you would need to consider it more strongly.
In the meantime, though, McCaffrey will attack his rehab and do his best to inspire his teammmates. I wouldn’t be shocked if they won a game without him, actually — they’re getting close enough that it’s going to happen before too long. They’ll have to find somebody else to score a couple of touchdowns — McCaffrey has four of the team’s five scores this year — but Teddy Bridgewater will win a game for the Panthers at some point.
As for McCaffrey? He’s going to be back. And maybe sooner than you think.
