NFC East Notes: Giants, Board, Thomas, Eagles, Jackson
There was a scary injury in the Giants game Sunday, as New York receiver C.J. Board went down with a neck injury that required him to be immobilized and carted off the field. Fortunately, it looks like the worst case scenario was avoided. The team announced that Board had been diagnosed with a neck sprain and concussion after being taken to a local hospital. Giants coach Joe Judge said after the game that the initial feedback he had gotten from doctors was “pretty positive.”
He also said Board was responsive and has movement in his extremities. A 2017 UDFA, Board is in his first season with the Giants. The Chattanooga product has seven catches for 66 yards on the year. Here’s to hoping he makes a swift and full recovery.
Now for more from the struggling NFC East:
- The Giants didn’t start first-round rookie Andrew Thomas at left tackle on Sunday, but it wasn’t because of his performance even though he hasn’t been playing as well as the other first-round tackles. Thomas was benched for disciplinary reasons after breaking a team rule, Judge said after the game. Judge wouldn’t go into too many details, but he didn’t make it sound too serious. Thomas entered the game in the second quarter and while this doesn’t seem like a huge deal, it’s also not a great sign for the fourth overall pick’s development.
- The Giants will play the Eagles on Thursday Night Football this week, and Philly is finally starting to get healthier. DeSean Jackson is expected to make his return from his hamstring injury for this Week 7 game, a source told Adam Schefter of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Jackson has missed the last three games as the Eagles’ offense has been besieged by injuries. Philly’s group of pass-catchers in particular have been banged up, and Jackson will return a much-needed vertical threat to the passing attack. Through two and a half games he had ten catches for 121 yards before going down.
Steelers’ Devin Bush Has Torn ACL
The Steelers picked up a dominant 38-7 win over the Browns on Sunday, but they didn’t escape the rivalry game unscathed. Linebacker Devin Bush indeed tore his ACL and will be done for the season, a source told Adam Schefter of ESPN.com (Twitter link).
Bush started 15 games as a rookie last year and every game so far this season, so it’s a huge loss. In fact, the tenth overall pick of last year’s draft had played every snap this season before going down. Pittsburgh’s defense has been the driving force behind their perfect 5-0 start, and it won’t be easy to replace him. Robert Spillane, a 2018 UDFA who plays almost entirely on special teams, filled in after Bush got hurt.
The Steelers were allowing only 3.3 yards per carry, the second best figure in the league, entering Sunday. They completely shutdown Kareem Hunt and Cleveland’s vaunted rushing attack, but slowing down opponent ground games will be a lot more difficult without Bush in the middle of the field.
Cardinals Sign CB Prince Amukamara To Practice Squad
Prince Amukamara is officially headed to the desert. We heard last week that the Cardinals were hoping to sign Amukamara once he cleared COVID-19 protocols, and now Dan Graziano of ESPN.com tweets that the deal is official. 
Interestingly, it’s a practice squad deal and he won’t be on the active roster initially. To make room on the practice squad Arizona released another veteran, receiver Jaron Brown. Amukamara was cut by the Bears back in February to clear cap space, then released by the Raiders shortly before the start of the regular season. Arizona has struggled in coverage at times and Amukamara has loads of starting experience, so this match makes some sense.
The Nebraska product has started 30 games over the past two seasons, and at 31 he should still have something left in the tank physically. The Cardinals of course have Patrick Peterson, but have struggled at corner outside of him.
The 19th overall pick of the 2011 draft, Amukamara will likely be on the active 53 before too long. The Giants were reportedly interested in bringing him back, but for whatever reason it didn’t work out. Brown was with the Cardinals from 2013-17, and has often showed flashes of promise as a deep threat during his career. With the Seahawks last season, he had 16 catches for 220 yards and two touchdowns. The year before that he had five scores with Seattle.
Giants Cut Damion Ratley, Promote Austin Mack
The Giants are shuffling around their receiving corp. They’re waiving receiver Damion Ratley and promoting receiver Austin Mack from the practice squad, the team announced Tuesday.
Ratley had actually been playing a fairly sizable role lately, especially after the injury to Sterling Shepard, so this is somewhat surprising. A sixth-round pick of the Browns in 2018, Ratley was waived by Cleveland at final cuts this year and claimed by the Giants the next day. He started a few games in each of his two years with the Browns, and had 200 yards and a touchdown last season.
So far with the Giants Ratley had played about 40 percent of the offensive snaps through five games, so that’s a decent amount of playing time that will now be available to Mack and others. He didn’t catch a pass this past week against the Giants, but had three receptions for 34 yards the week before against the Rams.
He’ll likely get a shot with someone else before too long. Mack is an undrafted rookie who signed with the Giants back in April and was added to the practice squad after final cuts. He’s an Ohio State product.
NFL Considering Postseason Bubble
As we’ve seen through the first handful of weeks of the 2020 season, handling COVID-19 outbreaks can be a logistical nightmare. Just this past week, one team forced the NFL to radically change up their schedule, switching up games and bye weeks for a handful of franchises.
The league obviously hopes to avoid that kind of chaos later in the season when it’s less easy to change things on the fly, and it appears they could look to the NBA for inspiration. The NFL is considering a playoff bubble, where playoff games would be played at predetermined neutral sites, sources told Lindsay Jones and Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic.
Los Angeles and Dallas are apparently two potential destinations, the sources indicated. One scenario apparently on the table is playing wild card games like normal, then moving into the bubble for the divisional and conference championship rounds, then moving on to Tampa Bay to play the Super Bowl as planned.
Don’t expect them to go full-blown bubble, as the sources said that the league isn’t giving any consideration to altering course and moving into an in-season bubble with all 32 teams. It’s an interesting proposition, and one that would make a lot of sense. If something like the Titans’ situation happened in the playoffs, with dozens of COVID-19 cases, it’s hard to imagine a sensible way to work around it.
Jones and Kaplan also make it seem like a Week 18 is inevitable at this point, with some games being pushed into early January. Once teams have already had their bye weeks it will be nearly impossible to move things around like they did this past week, and one source said it’s a matter of when, not if, there becomes a Week 18. Another source said they’ll likely only play Week 18 games that have playoff implications, so some teams could wind up playing only 15 regular season games.
Texans Sign Kyle Emanuel Off Raiders’ Practice Squad
Kyle Emanuel‘s NFL comeback is taking another step in the right direction. The Texans have signed the veteran linebacker off the Raiders’ practice squad, Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle tweets.
A fifth-round pick of the Chargers back in 2015, Emanuel quickly became a starter. From 2016-18 he started 29 games, but at the conclusion of his rookie contract he surprisingly opted to retire despite reportedly having multiple contract offers on the table. After sitting out the 2019 season, he announced his intention to return to the league back in March.
Obviously COVID-19 threw a bit of a wrench into his plans, and he ended up having to wait until late August to sign with Las Vegas. He was elevated to the active roster for Week 3 but has mostly been on Jon Gruden’s practice squad until now. 29 now, Emanuel will hope to revamp his career with a struggling Houston defense.
Sammy Watkins To Miss Time
The Chiefs are coming off a disappointing defeat at the hands of the Raiders where they lost as double-digit favorites, and now the offense is taking a blow. Receiver Sammy Watkins is expected to miss time with a hamstring injury, a source told Adam Schefter of ESPN.com (Twitter link).
The source told Schefter that the injury will sideline him “possibly a couple weeks.” Watkins has been having a solid but not spectacular season as a secondary option in Kansas City’s offense, with 21 catches for 222 yards and two touchdowns through their five games. He’s in the middle of his third season with the Chiefs after coming over from the Rams.
Watkins is seemingly always dealing with a health issue of some sort, and he hasn’t played a full 16-game season since his rookie campaign with Buffalo back in 2014. A player whose production has never quite lived up to his talent, there was a lot of talk this offseason about Watkins taking a paycut. He briefly flirted with taking a year off from the game, but ultimately agreed to reduce his salary from $14MM to $9MM (with another $7MM available in incentives) to stay with the team.
After an enormous Week 1 last year he quieted down before breaking out again in the playoffs. He had seven catches for 114 yards and a touchdown in the AFC Championship Game, and five catches for 98 yards in ther Super Bowl win over the 49ers. 2019 second-round pick Mecole Hardman will become the number two receiver and play a bigger role in Watkins’ absence.
Jaguars Release K Stephen Hauschka, Promote K Jon Brown
The Jaguars are changing kickers yet again. Jacksonville is releasing veteran Stephen Hauschka and replacing him by promoting Jon Brown from the practice squad, Field Yates of ESPN.com tweets.
Incredibly, this will now be the Jag’s fifth kicker of the season after regular placekicker Josh Lambo went down with a hip injury that landed him on injured reserve. Fortunately head coach Doug Marrone said the team is hoping Lambo will be ready for the team’s Week 7 game against the Chargers, so Brown might only end up filling in for one week.
Hauschka, the former Seahawks and Bills kicker, was signed back on September 28th. Despite a great deal of past experience and success Hauschka didn’t pan out in Jacksonville, and he had a disastrous game against the Texans yesterday.
He missed both of his field goal attempts, including shanking a 24-yarder and coming up short on a 49-yarder. Former Giants kicker Aldrick Rosas filled in for an injured Hauschka in Week 4 against the Bengals and played well, before landing back on the practice squad injured list with an injury of his own. Brandon Wright was briefly the kicker before he was waived after coming down with a groin injury.
Brown is a 2016 UDFA who originally played soccer at Kentucky before switching to football at Louisville. Brown has spent offseason time with the Bengals and 49ers, but has never kicked in a regular season NFL game. We don’t know what the heck is going on with Jacksonville’s special teams units right now, but hopefully Brown is able to avoid injury.
Giants’ Lorenzo Carter Has Torn Achilles
The hits keep on coming for the 0-5 Giants. Outside linebacker Lorenzo Carter has a torn Achilles and will miss the rest of the season, sources told Mike Garafolo of NFL Network (Twitter link).
Needless to say it’s unwelcome news, as Carter has been a full-time starter in 2020 and the Giants are pretty thin on pass-rushers outside of him. A third-round pick in 2018, Carter started 12 games for New York last year, racking up 45 tackles, 4.5 sacks (including a strip-sack of Tom Brady), and five passes defended. It’s a tough blow for the Georgia product, who will be entering the final year of his rookie deal next season.
Carter went down with a non-contact injury during their 37-34 loss to the Cowboys on Sunday, so the diagnosis isn’t too surprising. No one on the Giants has more than two sacks this season, and generating pressure has been an issue. Fellow outside linebackers Markus Golden and Kyler Fackrell will take on an even more important role moving forward.
Bengals Sign DT Xavier Williams, Place D.J. Reader On IR
The Bengals are bolstering their banged up defensive line. The team has signed defensive tackle Xavier Williams and placed fellow defensive tackle D.J. Reader on injured reserve in a corresponding roster move, Cincy announced Monday.
As we wrote last night, the team believes Reader, one of their big free agent signings this offseason, will miss the rest of the year with a quad injury. Williams is a 2015 UDFA who spent his first few seasons with the Cardinals. After finally getting some real playing time with Arizona in 2017, he signed with the Chiefs as a restricted free agent the following year. He appeared in all 16 games with Kansas City in 2018, starting four while racking up 47 tackles and 2.5 sacks.
He missed most of last year with an ankle injury but was activated down the stretch, and ended up playing a sizable role on defense in the Chiefs’ first two playoff wins. After earning his ring he signed with the Patriots back in August, but was cut two weeks ago after appearing in only one game with New England.
Fellow interior defensive lineman Mike Daniels is on injured reserve as well, leaving the Bengals without the stout run-stuffing trio they envisioned. Fortunately, All-Pro Geno Atkins made his 2020 debut this past week and should begin to ramp up his snaps.