There’s no more debate on this. It’s a disturbingly crowded field it beat out, but Teddy Bridgewater’s knee is the most devastating injury of the 2016 NFL season.
Nothing else is even close, and Norv Turner’s abrupt resignation Wednesday morning clinched it.
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The day it happened, August 30, it seemed like it would bring complete chaos to the Vikings and deal a mortal blow to their championship hopes. If those hopes aren’t dead now, they’re on life support.
It just took a little longer than everybody expected to do its damage. Turner walking away from the Vikings’ offensive coordinator job in midseason, literally — in midweek between the eighth and ninth weeks — is an admission that the problems that have spiraled out from Bridgewater’s absence are unsolvable.
There might not be an assistant in the sport better equipped to solve problems like this, to heal a sick offense, to mesh players and schemes and create something effective that maxes out the talent at hand.
Norv Turner has talked around it so far, but in between the lines it appears that this is too much even for his brilliance and resourcefulness.
And somehow this didn’t fall apart until after the Vikings started 5-0. That makes this even crazier. It’s one of the most incredible delayed reactions this league has seen. The Sam Bradford trade bought them some time. Turner did, too. Mike Zimmer bought them a lot. But two ugly losses and some sort of internal conflict later, things imploded.
The list of serious, franchise-altering injuries this year is a long one, but the consequences of this one have been bigger than the rest. The closest challenger is Tony Romo’s back injury … and that’s had the opposite effect on the Cowboys, miraculously.
With J.J. Watt, Jamaal Charles, Eddie Lacy, Tyrann Mathieu, seemingly half the Chargers roster and the others, the effects have been serious. They haven’t unraveled seasons in the blink of an eye, though.
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Even Adrian Peterson’s, and a bunch of his offensive linemen, don’t rise to the level of the effect Bridgewater’s absence has. Bridgewater was the first domino.
One wonders if all those other injuries had still happened — including Peterson — but Bridgewater was healthy and starting every game, would the clashes of philosophy still be there. And, for that matter, would Turner.
Obviously, without this injury, the Vikings also don’t take the gamble of the year, trading the first-round pick to the Eagles for Bradford. It’s worth wondering if, besides Bradford making it clear he’d wanted out of Philly and knowing nobody with his credentials was immediately available, whether already having his old coordinator, then-tight ends coach Pat Shurmur, didn’t nudge them toward making the move on Bradford.
In hindsight, it smells like a conflict waiting to happen.
Regardless, fitting Bradford into Bridgewater’s spot shook up the way they had approached the season and the window they thought they had. There were high hopes, but suddenly there was break-neck urgency. Even that speed is doubled now; that’s the message you send when you change coordinators mid-stream.
Finally, Turner walking away now means walking away from coaching Bridgewater when he returns, whenever that is. There’s no indication so far that his return won’t be next season, although there’s been almost no news or updates about his rehab since his September surgery.
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But Turner joined the Vikings to be with Zimmer and manage the development of their quarterback of the future (and present, of course).
Now, he ends up coaching him just two seasons and one interrupted training camp. No looking forward to next training camp and picking up where they left off, even after a broken Vikings season overall.
Stuff happens in the NFL, and plans get disrupted all the time. But this is beyond disruption.
By all accounts, Bridgewater’s injury was hideous enough. What it’s done to the Vikings’ season isn’t much prettier.