Beating the Kansas City Chiefs is tough enough these days. Doing so without your best players makes the task all the more daunting. The Raiders learned Friday that one of their best, and highest-paid, players might make his 2020 debut. Well, not quite his debut, but right offensive tackle Trent Brown has played only three
Raiders’ highest-paid player hopeful of playing full game for first time in more than 10 months
Brown wasn’t being truthful when he said he hurt his calf on the first drive vs. Carolina. Or he was creating a half truth. We’d have more empathy for him if he was up front on how the injury occurred and his work with PT (he explained his work with PT yesterday, which was good to hear).
He was hurt before training camp began. He didn’t participate in any of the training camp practices. The calf wasn’t fully healed and then gave out in the first series. So he essentially just explained the injury in the Carolina game, not the training camp absence.
Nonetheless, Raiders haven’t received the full return on signing Brown. He was out a significant portion of last year as well. Mayock and Gruden are losing patience (esp Mayock)
Before getting too worked up about Trent Brown, a more serious problem has cropped up for the KC game. One of their strength and conditioning coaches has tested positive for COVID. While retesting has been conducted, whether the game is played maybe a Sunday morning decision. Strength and conditioning coaches have the greatest and closest contact with players across the roster, including those on the IR list and the COVID reserve list. Regardless of the results of the retest, a sensible person (and player) would be have to be very leery of being close to any Chiefs players.
COVID testing is the weakest link, for the public-at-large and sports (players, coaches, support personnel). The best test is approximately 85% accurate, which means 15% of the results are unreliable. That high of a failure rate becomes one of “how much personal risk are you willing to assume for yourself and for your family?”