Ashton Jeanty Has Not Practiced Since August And I Am Being Asked To Remain Calm

Degenerates, the season starts tomorrow night, my team plays Sunday against Miami, and I am currently in possession of the single most useless category of information in this sport: guarded optimism.

Here is the situation in full. Ashton Jeanty sprained his right ankle in training camp reaching for a pass. The sprain is reported as low rather than high, which matters enormously and I will come back to it. It is not considered a major injury. Klint Kubiak has said he is optimistic Jeanty plays in the opener.

And the man has not practiced since August 23.

Low Versus High Is The Whole Ballgame

Most of you hear ankle sprain and file it as one thing. It is two completely different things and the difference is worth a round of draft capital.

• A low ankle sprain is the ligaments on the outside of the joint. Painful, swells, and generally measured in days to a couple of weeks. Guys play through them all the time with tape and a bad attitude.
• A high ankle sprain involves the connective tissue between the two bones of the lower leg. That is measured in weeks, it lingers, and it quietly steals burst for a month after the man is declared healthy.

Jeanty's is reported as the first kind. That is genuinely the good version, and it is the reason nobody in that building is panicking.

The injury is not the problem. Sixteen days of not practicing is the problem.

What Actually Worries Me

It is not the ligament. It is the calendar. A running back who has not taken a rep in over two weeks does not step onto a field in Week 1 and play thirty snaps. He plays twelve, gets his ankle re-taped at halftime, and watches somebody else take the two-minute drill.

That is not an injury outcome. That is a conditioning and trust outcome, and it is the one that actually costs you the week. A back can be medically cleared and still be the second-most-used man in his own backfield because the staff has not seen him move in sixteen days either.

The Part Where I Eat It

In July I wrote a column about this same coaching staff. I said the depth chart was a seating chart. I said Kubiak had built a hallway he intended to walk down in October. I told you to write down the date they made the change.

Kirk Cousins has been named the Week 1 starter.

Now, I said in that same piece that the rookie would not start Week 1 and that was correct. But I sold you a story with a lot more drama in it than the facts have so far delivered, and the honest scoreboard reads: veteran starts, rookie waits, Chief writes six hundred words about a microphone. I will take that one on the chin and I will be back in October to see whether the hallway exists.

What I Am Actually Doing Sunday

1. If he practices in any capacity before Sunday, I start him. A single limited session is the signal. It means the staff has seen him cut and is willing to plan around him.
2. If he does not practice at all this week, I sit him and I do it without agonising, because a back who goes from zero reps straight into a game is a twelve-snap player and twelve snaps loses you a week.
3. Either way I am not trading him. This is a low sprain on a young back in September. Anybody offering you a panic price for Ashton Jeanty right now is trying to buy four months of football for the cost of one bad Wednesday.
4. Handcuff if you can do it cheaply. Not because I believe he misses time, but because the cost of being wrong here is your entire Week 1.

I have watched this franchise find new and creative ways to disappoint me since I was old enough to pick a favourite colour. I am not going to pretend I am objective about them. But I have also learned to separate the part of my brain that loves them from the part that sets a lineup, and that second part wants to see one practice report before it commits.