Injuries affect early season NFL betting
The list of walking wounded grew during the NFL preseason, and the players who either will miss or have missed significant time due to injury will be important factors in handicapping the upcoming regular season games. Which injury will prove to be the most crucial? Shawne Merriman? Peyton Manning? Osi Umenyiora? No, the most noteworthy just might be Colts center Jeff Saturday.
NFL exhibition games may not count in the standings, but they are real games in every other sense of the word. Players are still going out there, getting hit and getting injured. Veterans are getting cut and changing teams, just as they will throughout the regular season. The betting odds will try and fail to keep up with all these roster moves.
There have been more publicized injuries this preseason, but the most important one from a handicapping standpoint might belong to Jeff Saturday, the 10-year center for the Indianapolis Colts. Saturday is expected to miss at least six weeks after suffering a torn MCL in Week 3 against Buffalo. Six weeks is a hopeful prognosis; if Saturday chooses to undergo surgery, the Colts will be happy to get him back in time for the playoffs.
There is no heir apparent to start the season at center; rookie Steve Justice from Wake Forest is reportedly the first option for offensive line coach Howard Mudd. Justice was the second-ranked center in the 2007 draft; he fell to the Colts in the sixth round because of his size (a relatively small 293 pounds). That’s big enough to win the ACC Jacobs Blocking Trophy, but Justice will be challenged to hold off NFL-size linemen.
Quarterback Peyton Manning also has a challenge on his hands. Surgery to remove a bursa sac in his knee kept Manning off the practice field until this past Tuesday. He has one week to establish a relationship with Justice and work on the timing of their snaps before facing the Chicago Bears to open Lucas Oil Field. Chicago was ranked seventh in defensive efficiency last year even while losing players left and right to injury.
Saturday’s absence figures to be every bit as important as the season-ending knee injury suffered by New York Giants DE Osi Umenyiora. However, the defending Super Bowl champions are getting more ink than the Colts at the moment, and Umenyiora plays one of the few “non-skill” positions that gets much public attention. The Giants have slipped from 12-1 to 15-1 to win another Super Bowl; Indianapolis is steady at 6-1.
Like the Colts, the Giants don’t have the luxury of plugging a proven reserve into Umenyiora’s position. They’re shuffling LB Mathias Kiwanuka into the mix after failing to lure Michael Strahan out of retirement. Kiwanuka was a star DE at Boston College, but again, size was an issue at 265 pounds. Kiwanuka made the switch to LB after his rookie 2006 campaign, although he did get some play as a third-down DE last year.
Umenyiora has already had his knee surgery; Saturday has yet to decide his plan of action. Shawne Merriman, on the other hand, has chosen not to go under the knife – at least, not yet. The San Diego Chargers LB will attempt to play with two torn ligaments in his left knee and hold off surgery until after the season.
Before the Merriman injury was revealed last week, San Diego had moved from 10-1 to 6-1 on the Super Bowl futures market. He’s the top pass rusher in the game (39.5 sacks in three seasons), but it’s unrealistic to expect Merriman to maintain that level of play while wearing a knee brace. What his decision does do is give San Diego a chance to groom sophomore LB Jyles Tucker – another Wake Forest product – to step into the starting lineup in Merriman’s place.
Tucker went undrafted in 2006, but he made the most of his opportunities late last year and signed a five-year contract with the Chargers on Monday. He’s got the talent to at least minimize the impact of the Merriman injury on San Diego’s Super Bowl chances. That’s the kind of depth that the Colts and Giants wish they had right now.