SI:AM | Another Star QB Goes Down
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Say a prayer for anyone who’s a fan of both the Jaguars and Florida State.
In today’s SI:AM:
↔️ College football’s biggest transfers
???? The Wild West of NIL
Ominous clouds for Jaguars
Stop me if you’ve heard this before this season, but a star quarterback has gone down with a potentially serious injury.
The Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence is the latest QB to get hurt—his lower leg was stepped on in the fourth quarter of last night’s game against the Bengals. (Watch the play here.) The injury came when teammate Walker Little was forced back by pass rusher Trey Hendrickson and inadvertently stepped on Lawrence’s ankle. Hendrickson and Jags receiver Zay Jones helped Lawrence to his feet, but he fell to the grass again immediately, eliciting a collective gasp from the Jacksonville crowd that was audible on the broadcast. Strangely, rather than be taken back to the locker room on a cart, Lawrence slowly made the long trek down the tunnel limping heavily.
Lawrence has a sprained ankle, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports.
“I don’t have any information yet on Trevor,” Jaguars coach Doug Pederson said after the game. “We’re still evaluating him.”
Veteran backup C.J. Beathard took over for Lawrence after the injury and led a late field goal drive to send the game to overtime. But Beathard’s biggest play of the night—a 43-yard bomb to Calvin Ridley on third down on the first possession of OT—was wiped out by an offensive holding penalty, forcing the Jags to punt. Cincinnati kicked a field goal on the following possession to win the game, 34–31.
We don’t know how bad Lawrence’s injury will prove to be. It’s possible that it looked worse than it is, but it sure looked nasty. If he misses any time, it would obviously put the Jags in a difficult situation. His continued improvement has been critical to the team’s emergence as an AFC contender, and Jacksonville simply wouldn’t be the same with Beathard.
The timing of Lawrence’s injury is also troublesome. The Jags’ next two games are against teams with fearsome pass rushes that are capable of causing nightmares for even the best quarterbacks, let alone one with just one start since 2018. First the Jags travel to Cleveland to face a Browns team that is second in the league in quarterback pressure rate. Then, they have a home game against the Ravens, who lead the league in sacks. Jacksonville’s schedule gets easier after that with games against the Buccaneers, Panthers and Titans to close the regular season, but the next two games are crucial to the team’s playoff hopes. The Jags are 8–4 after last night’s loss and have the Colts and Texans (both 7–5) breathing down their neck in the division race.
Lawrence is just the latest prominent quarterback to get hurt this season. We’ve already seen Aaron Rodgers, Joe Burrow, Kirk Cousins, Deshaun Watson, Anthony Richardson, Daniel Jones get injured. Even backups such as Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Tyrod Taylor have been injured, forcing their teams to resort to third-stringers. Two more quarterbacks got hurt Sunday, too. The Saints’ Derek Carr is in the concussion protocol for the second time in a month, in addition to being treated for a rib injury, and the Steelers’ Kenny Pickett had surgery for a high ankle sprain.
Fifty-two different quarterbacks started a game this season, which is on par for the number of unique starters to this point in the season. In the past five seasons, an average of 52.4 players have started at least one game at quarterback through Week 13. But what makes this season noteworthy is the number of high-profile QBs who’ve been sidelined. And there are still five weeks left in the regular season.
The best of Sports Illustrated
John Raoux/AP
- Trevor Lawrence’s injury put a damper on what was supposed to be a special night in Jacksonville, Gilberto Manzano writes.
- Pat Forde and Richard Johnson have a guide to the most impactful players in college football’s transfer portal thus far.
- Speaking of the transfer portal, Michael Rosenberg wrote about how the NCAA has allowed NIL deals to become the Wild West.
- As speculation about Shohei Ohtani’s destination continues to swirl, Stephanie Apstein connected a few dots that point toward the Blue Jays being a serious contender to land him.
- Zach Wilson is reportedly “reluctant” to start for the Jets again this season.
- The Dodgers are moving Mookie Betts to the infield full-time.
- Alabama quarterback Tyler Buchner is reportedly entering the transfer portal to play a different sport.
- A fan died at last night’s Pelicans-Kings game in Sacramento.
The top five...
… things I saw last night:
5. Jake Browning’s pinpoint passing on the Bengals’ first touchdown drive. Browning was on fire last night, completing 32 of 37 passes for 354 yards and a touchdown.
4. The Jets’ tic-tac-toe passing to set up a goal for Nikolaj Ehlers.
3. The Bengals’ terrible trick play that resulted in an interception.
2. Zach Edey’s vicious block on a player a foot shorter than him.
1. The playoff-like atmosphere in Indianapolis during the final minutes of the Pacers’ in-season tournament quarterfinal win over the Celtics.
SIQ
How many minutes did it take Klay Thompson to score a career-high 60 points on this day in 2016?
- 23
- 29
- 33
- 38
Yesterday’s SIQ: Barry Sanders won the Heisman Trophy on Dec. 4, 1988, but could not attend the ceremony because Oklahoma State was playing a game against Texas Tech in what foreign city?
- London
- Tokyo
- Toronto
- Mexico City
Answer: Tokyo. Sanders and the Cowboys played in the Coca-Cola Classic, an annual regular-season game that was played in Tokyo from 1977 to ’93.
As Rick Telander explained in a SI article at the time, Sanders was supposed to join the Heisman ceremony via a satellite link from the team’s hotel in Japan. But Sanders was known to be quite shy and initially tried to back out of the arrangement because he wasn’t even sure whether he’d win the award. He eventually (and reluctantly) agreed to appear on the broadcast, which was held early Sunday morning Tokyo time, but his offensive linemen were much more excited about the award than Sanders was. Here’s how Telander described the scene:
When Peter Lambos, the president of the Downtown Athletic Club, announced that Sanders had won the Heisman—he got twice as many points as [Rodney] Peete, who came in second—the new heir to [O.J.] Simpson, [Tony] Dorsett and [Herschel] Walker stared stonily into the camera. But next door the blockers went nuts, whooping like children. Of Sanders’s indifference, [guard Jason] Kidder said, “It’s for real, it’s no show. It’s Barry. The other day he asked for my autograph. I asked why, and he said, ‘Because I’m not better than you are.’”
Hours after being named the winner of the award, Sanders went out and had his best game of the season, rushing for 332 yards on 44 carries with four touchdowns as Oklahoma State won 45–42.