nfl
Cardinals lose Michael Wilson for the year with a fractured vertebra
The Arizona receiver fractured a vertebra on his fourth snap Sunday, stayed in the game with a stiff neck, and learned the truth Monday. His loss leaves a 3-6 team with four active receivers and a quarterback in doubt.
Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Michael Wilson will miss the rest of the season after fracturing a vertebra in his neck Sunday, coach Mike LaFleur said Monday.
A source told ESPN that Wilson is expected to wear a brace for six weeks to two months. LaFleur said he is not worried about the injury being long-term.
Wilson was on pace for his second straight 1,000-yard season. He is the third Cardinals receiver lost for the year on a 3-6 team that traded away a fourth, and his injury leaves Arizona with four active wide receivers and a quarterback in doubt.
The injury happened on the Cardinals’ fourth offensive play of their loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Wilson caught a 17-yard pass from quarterback Gardner Minshew II and was tackled by Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon. He landed on his head and told the team he had a kink in his neck, ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss reported.
“He’s such a warrior that he didn’t think much of it,” LaFleur said. “And then obviously when the adrenaline wore down and he got his test today, that’s when we knew.”
Wilson finished the season with 51 catches for 546 yards and two touchdowns, NFL.com confirmed. The Cardinals listed him as their top healthy receiver coming into the week. He is now their latest absence.
Arizona dealt Marvin Harrison Jr. to the Houston Texans in Week 5. Jalen Brooks went on injured reserve with a wrist injury. Kendrick Bourne followed with an ankle injury. Now Wilson is gone, and the Cardinals are down to Simi Fehoko, Devin Duvernay, Reggie Virgil and Harrison Wallace III as their only active wide receivers, according to ESPN.
LaFleur said he has never seen this many injuries at one position in his coaching career. In a team meeting Monday, he told his players there is “a lot of opportunity” left.
“A lot of opportunity for guys to go out there and show us what they got,” LaFleur said. “So, where there’s setbacks, there’s setups for success. So, we’ll go from there.”
The Cardinals are 3-6 after the Seahawks loss, NFL.com’s Week 9 roundup noted. Their playoff chances were already thin. They are thinner now, and the problem is not just at receiver.
The Cardinals are evaluating quarterback Gardner Minshew after a hit to his right elbow and arm on the last play of the first half. Seahawks linebacker Dante Fowler Jr. hit Minshew as he threw, forcing a fumble. Minshew was in pain on the ground and again walking to the locker room, ESPN reported.
LaFleur said Minshew could miss this week’s game and that the team will know more Wednesday. If Minshew cannot play, the Cardinals will turn to rookie Carson Beck, who moved up to second-string last week after spending the first eight weeks as the emergency third quarterback.
Beck would not require a redesigned offense, LaFleur said. “It’s not like it’s the difference between a Wing-T offense and a spread offense,” he said. “A lot of the stuff that Carson likes and is good at is the same stuff that Gardner likes.”
Center Hjalte Froholdt is also in the concussion protocol, NFL.com reported. The Cardinals have lost their top receiver, may lose their quarterback, and are missing their starting center. The practice squad holds three recently signed receivers in Zay Jones, Shedrick Jackson and James Proche II, none of whom have taken a snap for Arizona this season.
The timing is cruel. Wilson’s injury came three plays into a game the Cardinals needed to stay in the NFC West race. He stayed in after the hit, or tried to. The fracture did not show up until Monday’s imaging, after the adrenaline was gone and the season was already lost in the standings.
A neck fracture is not a soft-tissue injury. Wilson will spend up to two months in a brace, and LaFleur’s insistence that the injury is not long-term is the kind of thing a coach says the day after a player is ruled out. The medical reality will be sorted out in the coming weeks, away from a podium.
What the Cardinals are left with is a depth chart held together by signings and rookies. Fehoko, Duvernay, Virgil and Wallace have a combined career that would not fill a starting lineup on most teams. They will be asked to.
What I think
The Cardinals’ season is over, and the injury report is the reason.
A team does not lose its top three receivers, trade its fourth, and keep its starting quarterback healthy enough to compete. Arizona has done the first three and may not do the fourth. The standings say 3-6 with eight games left. The roster says something worse.
What stands out is how quietly Wilson’s fracture happened. He caught a pass, landed on his head, told the sideline his neck was stiff, and kept going. The team let him. The imaging that found the broken vertebra came a day later, after the game was over and the adrenaline had cleared. A player who said he was fine was not fine, and nobody knew until it was too late to sit him.
That is not a failure of toughness. It is a failure of the system that is supposed to protect players from themselves. Wilson is a competitor. He was on pace for 1,000 yards. He was not going to take himself out of a game in the first quarter. The protocol that let him back on the field is the same protocol the league points to when it talks about player safety, and it missed a fractured vertebra.
LaFleur called Wilson a warrior, and he is. That word is doing a lot of work in that sentence. A warrior is what a coach calls a player who plays through something he should not have played through. The compliment is real, and so is the cost.
The Cardinals will patch the receiver room with practice-squad call-ups and hope Beck can run the offense if Minshew is out. None of it will matter much. A 3-6 team missing its best receiver, its quarterback, and its center is not a team making a playoff push. It is a team playing out the schedule.
The trade deadline is Tuesday. Arizona is a seller’s market now, if it wants to be. The Cardinals have already moved Harrison. They have eight games to find out whether Beck is a quarterback, whether Fehoko can catch, and whether the pieces left behind are worth keeping for next year. That is the season they are playing. The one before Sunday is gone.