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The Sunday night matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Arizona Cardinals ended in a way that nobody wanted to see.
On the last offensive play for the Eagles, quarterback Sam Bradford threw an interception that ended up being picked off by safety Tyrann Mathieu. On the play, Mathieu jumped the route, but came down awkwardly on his knee. He was able to get up and walk off the field, but he needed to be helped to the locker room. It turns out that Mathieu tore his ACL and will miss the remainder of the season.
The Cardinals are going to greatly miss the presence of Mathieu. Not only is he a great player on the field, but he is one of the team’s leaders off of it. He gained a tremendous amount of respect from the team for the way he handled the substance abuse issues he dealt with at LSU. He turned his life around after going to rehab, and he became a role model for the team, despite being so young. Bruce Arians and the team are going to have trouble replacing Mathieu, but the Cardinals shouldn’t have put themselves in that situation.
When Bradford threw the interception, there was only 2:37 left in the fourth quarter. The Cardinals were winning the game 40-17 at the time. So the question is this: Why were some of the starters still on the field for the Cardinals? It would have been virtually impossible for the Eagles to make a comeback and win the game at that point. So why risk any injuries to their star players? This situation should be a wake-up call for all NFL coaches about the dangers of playing their starters late into blowout games.
Arians is far from the only coach to play starters late in these situations. The coach most notorious for leaving his starters in for a long time is Bill Belichick. Coach Belichick rarely pulls his starters from action before the final two minutes even if the team is crushing their opponent. He risks injuries to Tom Brady all the time, but he doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue.
Another example of starters playing late into blowouts was the Carolina Panthers and New York Giants game on Sunday. Though the Giants came back from 28 down to tie the game, the Panthers were leading big for a majority of the contest.
The turning point in the game came on the drive where Odell Beckham Jr. and Josh Norman went after each other on seemingly every play. In that situation, it may have been a good idea for Ron Rivera to get Norman out of the game, because Beckham’s behavior seemed to re-energize the Giants and allow them to get back into the contest.
If Norman hadn’t been in there following Beckham’s outbursts, the team may not have been as fired up to beat the Giants’ defense. After all, the Giants were down 21 entering the fourth quarter, and Norman probably could have benefited from a drive off. Of course, there’s a chance that it could have had a negative impact, but coaches can always put starters back in if their team is struggling.
At the end of the day, it’s tough to know when to sit starters, but coaches should err on the side of caution when their teams are in the thick of the playoff race. Mathieu’s injury should serve as a warning to every team in the postseason race about how much they want to lean on their starters late in games. There’s a chance we could see a lot more rest than normal for starters in the upcoming weeks after NFL teams see what happened to Mathieu.
Jacob Camenker is an NFL Featured Writer for www.RantSports.com. You can like him on Facebook here, follow him on Twitter @jacobyhorse, or add him to your network on Google.
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