Reaction to RG3's injury

Pretty sad to watch that happen yesterday. Whenever somebody goes down with nobody around them you can pretty much assume its a really bad injury. Even more so when it's happening at a slow speed like what happened last night with RG3. Nothing has come out yet, but I don't think there's any doubt that he tore his ACL,MCL, or meniscus. Hopefully it's a meniscus injury because the surgery/rehab is not that difficult and you can be full strength within a month in some cases. That's just me thinking optimistically cause I like the dude. My actual opinion is that he won't be ready until November of next season.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Should he have been playing? Obviously you can't predict something like that is going to happen, but can you prevent it? Can you make the right decisions to ensure that something like that doesn't happen to your franchise QB. Should the head coach, player, or team doctor be the one to make the decision?

Shanahan stated that RG3 said he wasn't injured, he was hurting. That's a great quote, and a great thing to say...it's not true regarding his injury. Hurt, to me, means it's not going to get worse. Hurt would be playing with a broken toe. Hurt would be playing with a badly bruised thigh. Anytime you have ligament damage, that's an injury. Add to that, he was hobbling around the entire game on a wet field and James Andrews was on the sideline looking like he was going to vomit every time Griffin started to move outside of the pocket. If you're a pitcher in baseball, you're not going to miss a start because you've got a hurt toe...but if it's your elbow, you shouldn't be throwing. I won't lie, I threw a lot with elbow pain. I just popped a couple of pills and went out there. In retrospect it was absolutely retarded to do that, but I was a competitor and there wasn't an option of not throwing with pain. RG3 is the exact same way, and all athletes are. It's the reason that it shouldn't be their decision.

There needs to be a protocol, much like concussions, where the team doctors have the ability to veto a coaches decision regarding an injured player. Obviously there needs to be degrees to this power, but in cases like RG3 a third party, outside of the organization needs to be the one making the decisions. Freak accidents are going to happen in a sport that's inherently violent like football, but much like brain related injuries, injuries that have the possibility of getting significantly worse during participation need to be seriously looked at; especially when you're talking about a franchise player.

Les anyone think that I'm blaming Shanahan for this injury. I won't do that. He was 100% right in doing what he did. Anyone in his position would have done the exact same thing. My argument is that in the heat of the moment, that type of decision shouldn't be placed in the hands of a coach or player.