was during the 2012 offseason when the Tampa Bay Bucs were able to lure the Super
Bowl Champion and two-time All-Pro New Orleans Saints guard
Cheap Josh LeRibeus Jersey , Carl Nicks, away from the team who drafted him. The former fifth round pick, who supplanted a suspended Jamar Nesbit during
his 2008 rookie season, had just signed the richest contract ever (5 years,
$47.5 Million) for an offensive lineman.Few things chap my black and gold ass
more than when the Saints have let home-grown talent they drafted walk out of
their building to another franchise. I knew Nicks would continue to dominate and
be a thorn in the Saints side after ditching them for their NFC South rival.What
I didn’t know was that Nicks would play nine games for the Bucs over the next
two seasons before retiring at the age of 29. He had accrued six seasons in the
NFL, which is twice the length of an average career. But Carl Nicks wasn’t
average. He was arguably the best guard in the NFL, and he should have played
longer, if he wanted to.It turned out, Nicks did want to keep playing, but his
body simply wouldn’t let him. After gutting out almost half of his 2012 season
with the Bucs on a torn plantar plate in his left foot, Nicks decided to go on
injured reserve and have surgery on his ailing toe.A torn plantar plate is a
dorsal dislocation of the big toe. When the big toe hyper-extends, the tissues
on the bottom of the toe tear. Our big toes are responsible for bearing the
brunt of our weight and providing good push off power. Weighing around 345
pounds, Nicks’ toe must have been killing him, and even though he performed
admirably on it for the first half of the season, he must have realized he could
not continue playing if he didn’t address the problem surgically.”It’s been
unbelievable what he’s been able to play through,” said former Bucs safety Ronde
Barber. “It’s about the size of two golf balls.” Ouch. In late October, Nicks
had surgery and went on injured reserve to finish the 2012 season.Then during
training camp in August 2013, Nicks developed a blister on the side of his left
foot and it became infected. But it wasn’t a blister at all. It was methicillin
resistant staphylococcus aureus or more commonly referred to as MRSA. MRSA is a
very dangerous bacterial infection that is resistant to most antibiotics. There
are even a couple deadly strains that are resistant to all know drug treatments.
It begins looking like small red bumps that sometimes accompany fever and
rashes. About 75% of MRSA infections are localized to skin and soft tissue and
can usually be treated effectively.MRSA is common in hospitals, prisons, and
nursing homes where already immune suppressed people can be infected through
open wounds, invasive devices like catheters, and even personal items like
towels. It’s also become all too common in NFL training facilities. St. Louis,
Cleveland, and Washington have all shared Tampa Bay’s history with MRSA-rampant
locker rooms.“They’re often working out together, in close physical
proximity
Cheap Vonn Bell Jersey , they often have skin abrasions and wounds, they often share towels, sometimes to wipe off their sweat, and some have a “lucky”
towel or jersey that they don’t wash, which may become contaminated with MRSA,”
said Dr. Victoria Fraser, chair of the department of medicine at Washington
University in St. Louis, who helped the CDC investigate the Rams’ outbreak.In
late September of 2013, Nicks thought the worst was over. ”I’m MRSA clear,”
Nicks declared after participating in a limited fashion in a workout at One Buc
Place. “I’m all right. Just trying to get back out there and hopefully I’ll be
ready for this game. Anytime you get any kind of injury like that, there’s
pain,” he said, “but it was more mental than anything. I wasn’t really scared,
just irritated that I couldn’t be out there with my guys.”He played in the third
and fourth games of the season against New England and Arizona before finding
out the MRSA had returned. Nicks missed the rest of the 2013 season and never
played professional football again. After spending months rehabilitating his
injury and complications from his infection, Nicks finally called it quits in
August 2014.In a statement released by the Bucs, Nicks said, ”I’d like to thank
the Buccaneers organization for working with me as I have attempted to get
myself back on the football field. However, after careful consideration, I have
made the decision to step away from the game. This was by no means an easy
decision, but I believe that it is what is best for me and my family, as well as
the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.”Nicks didn’t owe the Bucs a gracious goodbye or thank
you. In fact, the Bucs owe Nicks a lot more than the $3 Million injury
settlement they gave him instead of his $7 Million annual salary. If we look at
the case of his equally unfortunate teammate, kicker Lawrence Tynes, the Bucs
owed him the full amount of that five year deal.In 2015 Tynes sued the Bucs for
$20 Million, or the estimated amount of earnings he expected to make if he had
been able to play another six or seven years like he planned to do. During the
same preseason in 2013
Cheap Austin Carr Jersey , the Bucs sent Tynes to their surgical affiliate in Tampa Bay so that Tynes could have a couple millimeters of an
ingrown toe nail removed.Tynes returned to One Buc Place for rehabilitation, but
a few days later, not only was the toe not healing, it was getting much worse.
Long story short, Tynes’ brilliant career, which included two Super Bowl rings
and two game-winning overtime kicks in separate NFC Championship Games, was
over. His toe and general health are still negatively affected, and the pain he
feels while kicking has never gone away.Tynes knew he had a case when, after
filing a grievance through the NFLPA, the Bucs “offered to make it right in
terms of my classification” and “give the credited season without even a
hearing.” You see, not only did the Bucs refuse to admit the infection came from
their facility, they also deliberately fucked over Tynes by placing him on the
non-injury football list instead of injured reserve.This classification was
imperative because players placed on IR were also entitled to their full salary,
an accrued season, full benefits and another season toward their pensions. Tynes
was miffed, and reasonably so.Right after Tynes and Nicks were diagnosed with
MRSA, the Bucs hired an outside firm to sanitize their facilities. They spent
five figures on a massive air purifier. They required players to shower before
leaving the locker room and cover their cuts and abrasions with watertight
bandages before doing hydrotherapy.The team even brought in Deverick Anderson,
an infectious disease specialist and co-director of the Duke Infection Control
Outreach Network. He did a review of the facilities and went on to tell their
next opponent, the Eagles, that the Bucs had “the lowest risk of transmitting
MRSA to any other team.”Anderson gave the Bucs player a series of Q&A
sessions, which Tynes described as “a dog and pony show.” A few weeks later,
Bucs cornerback Johnthan Banks tested positive for MRSA. In his lawsuit, Tynes
alleged that “appropriate precautions and procedures to prevent a MRSA
infection, and the spread of MRSA, were neither in place nor being actively
followed at the Bucs training facility in 2013” and he was not informed of
“ongoing separate incidents of infection amongst individuals who used and
visited One Bucs Place” when he chose to rehab his toe injury there.The suit
claimed that former athletic trainer Todd Toriscelli was the Bucs’ MRSA Patient
Zero. Apparently Toriscelli “had undergone several knee surgeries related to an
infection” and even “admitted to close friends that his own MRSA infection was
the source of Mr. Tyne’s infection.” A source close to Toriscelli disputed this
to the MMBQ saying Toriscelli “never tested positive for MRSA, and cultures were
taken at the time that verify that fact.”Either way
Cheap Sheldon Rankins Jersey , there were some nasty cold tubs and towels up in One Buc Place and no one, especially athletes worth millions of dollars,
should have been exposed to such a health compromised working environment.“The
problem was the facility, let’s be real. If we got into this, I bet you there’s
10 more guys - because half the damn team was on antibiotics. If you put me on
IR,” he argued, “you’re saying I got [the infection] at the facility. They
didn’t want to admit I got it there.” “I’m gonna be here until I win,” Tynes
promised. “Whatever that entails. I don’t care how long it takes.” I wish Nicks
didn’t let the Bucs off so easy. “This whole thing is wrong,” Tynes told Fox
Sports. “My biggest emphasis is I don’t want this to happen to any current or
future player. I’m going to fight this thing as long as I have to, because this
team should not be allowed to do this to players.”I hope every single NFL
franchise has taken MRSA seriously and provided safe and sanitary conditions for
their players going forward. Even more, I hope Carl Nicks becomes a cautionary
tale instead of an everyday NFL statistic. Drew Brees sees a lot of himself in
Browns rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield.And then some."I think he can be a lot
better than me," the New Orleans Saints star said Wednesday.A fellow Texan,
Brees has never met Mayfield but he's tracked his playing career from afar and
has been impressed by virtually everything he's seen from the Heisman Trophy
winner, now waiting his turn to play in Cleveland. Brees, who will face the
Browns on Sunday, loves Mayfield's competitiveness and playmaking ability, and
believes he can develop into one of the NFL's top quarterbacks."He's got all the
tools," said Brees, who could pass Peyton Manning and Brett Favre this season on
the career list for yards passing. "He's more athletic. He probably can run
around better. He's got a stronger arm. He's got all the tools."Brees would
know. Now in his 18th season, the 39-year-old has been defying preconceived
opinions about quarterbacks and proving people wrong from the moment the
Chargers drafted him in the second round in 2001.Too short. Too slow. Too this.
Too that. It won't say any of those things on his Hall of Fame bust.Brees has
broken the mold on what a star quarterback is supposed to look like. And while
he might not be able to look many of his QB peers in the eye, he's been able to
make up for any physical limitations with other gifts."I don't know what it's
like to be 6-foot-5 because I never will be 6-5, never have been 6-5," Brees
said. "But I'll say it like this: If every one of you closed your eyes, all of
your other senses would be heightened, your sense of smell
Cheap Alvin Kamara Jersey , your sense of hearing, all that other stuff. So maybe because I'm 6 feet, maybe there's certain things that I can't see as
well, but for that reason, maybe I can hear it and feel it better because that's
what I've had to do my whole career."You find a way to make up for it. You just
get it done."By doing what he's done for nearly two decades, Brees has paved the
way for Mayfield — and other smaller quarterbacks — to follow his footsteps.If
not for Brees and his major success as a multi-year Pro Bowler and Super Bowl
champion, it's unlikely the Browns would have taken a chance on Mayfield and
drafted him first overall."I do take a lot of pride in that," Brees
said.Mayfield was a walk-on at Texas Tech and again at Oklahoma, where he became
one of the school's most celebrated players. And while he didn't have the
strongest arm or best 40-yard dash time or some of the other physical attributes
the other QBs in this year's class could boast, Brees said Mayfield has shown he
can win."Well, at some point you just have to look at results, right?" he said.
"So you have to let your mind go past the measurable — maybe how big a guy is or
how fast he runs or that kind of stuff and just turn on the tape and does the
guy compete? Does the guy make plays? Does the guy win football games? And
obviously he's proven he can do all those things."When Brees broke in, he was a
backup for Doug Flutie, another undersized QB who showed it's not just a game
for big men. Brees watched Flutie excel at a high level and molded his game
accordingly."I had a chance to learn from one of the absolute best in my
opinion, especially when it came to just having to at times just make plays
because of your size and maybe certain limitations," Brees said. "He would get
the job done. So I had a chance to learn from a guy like that and I owe him a
lot of credit. We call it the 6-foot and under club. All the 6-foot guys, we
kind of know what it's like."We kind of have the chip on our shoulder 'cause
we've heard it our whole life. I just kind of chuckle at it. Maybe it is
something. Maybe it isn't. But it gives us an edge."Brees was asked if Mayfield
is in the under 6-foot club."Well, is he 6-foot and under?" Brees said.He was
told Mayfield measured just a shade over 6 feet."All right, well, that counts,"
Brees said. "He's in the club."
