Injuries are an inevitable fact of life in every sport, but NFL players have it tougher than most. It’s one of the world’s roughest games – a fact evidenced by the helmets and protective clothing worn by all professional American football players. Worse still, injuries inflicted on NFL players can be particularly brutal in their effects, sometimes resigning them to the benches for years at a time – occasionally, the damage can be so severe that players are forced to retire from the game permanently.
Fortunately, the players we’ll be discussing today did not suffer such a dramatic fate – these players always knew that injuries were a serious possibility, and took advantage of their time off the field to re-group, re-train, and ensure that they bounced back better than ever for their teams, their fans, and of course – themselves.
When choosing the five players to discuss in this article, we began by setting some ground rules. Our picks all missed the majority of the 2022 season due to one or more injuries obtained on the field; additionally, we only chose players who have the potential to make either the Pro Bowl or All-Pro line-ups for the 2023 season. The NFL odds for every team are heavily influenced by which players are available for selection by their coaches – a strong comeback by any of these men has the potential to change the course of America’s most popular sport in 2023. Let’s take a look:
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Throughout the first half of the 2022 season, Breece Hall was proving to be a formidable asset for his team the New York Jets. Many pundits considered the right-back to be a prime candidate for the Offensive Rookie of the Year award. That dream was scuppered when Hall suffered a minor injury to his meniscus in October, along with a far more serious tear in his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
The ACL links your thigh bone to the front of your shin and is a relatively common injury in sports which requires sudden stopping or direction changes – it is nevertheless a very serious knee injury and requires serious caution from coaches when deciding when to return players to the field. Reports state that Breece is ahead of schedule in terms of his recovery and keen to back to playing football as soon as possible; if the rumors are to be believed, we’ll be seeing him back in the game from the beginning of the 2023 season.
Ravens superstar quarterback Lamar Jackson also suffered a knee injury late in the 2022 season, this time to the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). The PCL is the strongest ligament of the knee, extending from the top-rear surface of the tibia to the bottom-front surface of the femur. Injuries to the PCL are sometimes referred to as a hyperextended knee and can occur when players land awkwardly after jumping. Being the strongest ligament in the knee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUoZCXH3Bss
Injuries to the PCL can be extremely serious and sometimes put players out of action for entire seasons at a time. Because of this, many were skeptical as to whether Jackson would be ready to return to the field anytime soon when the Ravens signed a $260 million contract extension in April. The player answered his critics by posting evidence of his recovery progress on his Twitter account and is now expected to be back in the game early in the new season.
The Rams had a tough year in 2022 as several of their key players suffered serious injuries which made them unavailable to play for much of the season. The loss of star Quarterback Matthew Stafford was arguably the team’s biggest setback, as he was only available for nine games during the entirety of 2022 due to a severe neck injury.
This was not the first time that the troubled player has been placed on injured reserve for much of the year either – Stafford has battled many injuries throughout his NFL career and is fast approaching 35 years of age, so he’ll likely only be participating in the sport for two to three further seasons at the most. Matthew is certain to want to finish on a high note, however, and some are even tipping him to collect a second Comeback Player of the Year award in 2023. It seems a little early to make such a statement in our eyes, but Stafford’s outstanding performance during the 2021 season proves that you should never underestimate him.
The 2022 season was a devastating wakeup call for Colts linebacker Shaquille Leonard – his first four seasons were relatively uneventful and saw him nominated for the Pro Bowl or All-Pro awards, but his injury-riddled 2022 campaign was an entirely different matter. The player suffered from a non-specific back injury, and his first surgery aimed at fixing the problem was not successful. Because of this, Colts head coach Shane Steichen remained tight-lipped on when he expected Leonard to return.
Fans were finally given positive news in April when Shaquille finally made a personal statement regarding his condition for the first time. It was an encouraging update, but any player that has undergone multiple surgeries on their back is sure to be treated with caution by their team. Most projections agree that Leonard will be returning to the NFL during 2023, but few anticipate him appearing during week one.
We’ll finish up with another Rams player, the 2021 triple-crown winner Cooper Kupp. Like his teammate Matthew Stafford, Kupp was unable to put in his best performance in the latter half of the 2022 season – this time as a result of an ankle injury which required an operation and a long period of rehabilitation. It was a disappointing result for a player who, despite his shortened term, still managed to rank third in receiving yards per game.