Falcons' Kendal Daniels Alert After Neck Injury; Giants' Cam Skattebo Says He Got Punished
Two clubs, two kinds of bad Sunday. One was done to a team. The other a team did to itself.
Start in Atlanta, where the football part stopped mattering for a few minutes. Falcons rookie linebacker Kendal Daniels injured his neck on a tackle attempt against the Chicago Bears, was strapped to a stretcher and carted off, and was ruled out for the rest of the game. He had movement in one of his hands as he left the field. After the game, the Falcons said he was alert and had movement in all his extremities.
That last sentence is the whole story, and it's the version of this story everyone in the building will take. Hand movement on the field, then movement everywhere a couple hours later. That's the progression that matters, and it's the one that should quiet a locker room.
My read on what comes next: Daniels doesn't play in Atlanta's next game, whatever the scans show, and the Falcons should say so early rather than let a week of optimism build around a neck injury suffered on a helmet-to-knee hit. Rookies lobby to play. Teams have to be the adults. The football cost is real too. Atlanta lost to Chicago and now has a linebacker rotation with a question in it that only the practice report can answer, and whoever is next up gets snaps he wasn't expecting. What would make me wrong is Daniels showing up as a full participant the first day the Falcons practice. I don't expect it, and I don't think Atlanta should want it.
Now to the Giants, where the strange part isn't the injury report. Cam Skattebo had zero touches in New York's Week 6 loss to the New Orleans Saints, one week after a critical fumble in overtime. Skattebo's explanation: "I got punished." He added that he understood why the Giants did it. Head coach John Harbaugh's explanation: the zero carries were not by design. Reporting also has Skattebo losing the starting running back job to Najee Harris.
Those two accounts cannot both be true, and I know which one I believe. If Skattebo's total absence truly wasn't by design, then the Giants ran a game plan so thoroughly broken that it accidentally erased a running back for a full afternoon. Coaches don't misplace players. They make examples and then decline to use the word. Harbaugh saying it wasn't by design is a coach protecting a decision he'd make again, not a coach describing an accident.
Here's my problem with it. Accountability is cheap to praise and expensive to enforce, and the bill comes due when you're losing. Benching a rookie over a fumble is defensible in a vacuum. It stops being defensible when the punishment costs you a player who could have helped you beat New Orleans. The Giants lost that game and made their offense smaller to prove a point. Harris benefits most, obviously, since he now owns the backfield, and Skattebo's fantasy managers just learned his floor is zero. But the people hurt worst are the ones paying for tickets to watch the more physical back stand on the sideline.
The consensus this week will be that Harbaugh got his culture right. I'd push back. Culture that shows up in the touch sheet is a luxury for teams with margin, and the Giants haven't earned that margin yet. A coach can discipline a player and still hand him the ball. Those aren't mutually exclusive, and treating them as if they are is how a rebuilding season turns into a lecture.
My verdict: Atlanta's problem was an accident, and the Falcons should handle it with patience they won't want to show. New York's problem was a choice, and Harbaugh should stop making it by Wednesday. If Skattebo's touches stay at zero for another week, the Giants will have taught a rookie a lesson and cost themselves a season doing it.