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Tory Horton Was Playing on a Broken Leg and Just Kept Going
Tory Horton told reporters Friday that the mystery shin injury that ended his rookie season was a cracked tibia. The part that will keep you up tonight is the timeline: he first felt it around Week 3, kept playing, and nobody took an image of the thing until Week 9.
“About Week Three, I started feeling my shin and worked through it through a couple games,” Horton said, per NBC Sports. “Got to Week 9, got it checked up and found out there was a crack.” That Week 9 game was the 38-14 win over Washington where he caught two touchdowns. The rookie was out there running full routes on a fractured leg and finishing plays in the end zone.
5 TDs
Horton’s receiving touchdown total on just 13 catches before the injury shut him down.
Seattle held out hope the bone would knit on its own so he could return for the playoffs. It didn’t. “I felt like we just made the smart move of just holding out, seeing if it heals on its own, and the time just kind of got away from us,” he told ESPN. Surgery came in February, after the Super Bowl. “I did have surgery,” he said. “I have a metal rod in there so the leg isn’t going anywhere.”
What gets me is the guilt. He watched a championship run from a couch with a broken leg and his takeaway was that he’d failed somebody. “I just felt like I let the team down a little bit,” he told ESPN. Tory, respectfully, you scored five times on thirteen catches. Some of it on a snapped bone. You are square with us.
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He watched a championship run from a couch with a broken leg and his takeaway was that he’d failed somebody.
He avoided the PUP list, he’s practicing, and the load management we watched earlier this week suddenly reads less like caution and more like arithmetic. Fourth in a receiver room behind JSN, Kupp and Shaheed is a fine place to be when the alternative was another winter of waiting.
SOURCES →
Practice Report
Leonard Williams Ran Down His Own Tight End, and It Got Worse From There
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15 yards
How far Leonard Williams chased Barner downfield after the whistle to make the tackle that lit the fuse.
That set the tone. Guard Bryce Cabeldue had already gotten crossways with defensive tackle J.R. Singleton during pass rush drills, and the defense apparently kept a ledger. Later, after an outside run play was already dead, Derick Hall came flying in at Cabeldue from behind and hit him in the back of the head, neck and shoulders. Connor O’Toole got a piece of Cabeldue too. It was, generously, a rough afternoon to be Bryce Cabeldue.
None of this worries me. Six practices into camp with a Super Bowl on the wall and HBO in the building, guys are going to swing. What worries me is Ernest Jones IV walking off in the middle of it with an injury nobody has put a name to yet. Seattle’s defense returns essentially everybody, and Jones is the wiring.
Tyrice Knight has been good enough this summer that the drop-off is survivable if it’s a week. It’s the other version nobody wants to say out loud on August 1.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Elijah Arroyo turned Friday into his own personal showcase, piling up catches with real yardage after the grab and finishing with a leaping contested deep ball from Jalen Milroe. Brian Fleury spent four years coaching tight ends in San Francisco. You can stop calling the install theoretical. Seahawks.com
Milroe is mixing in work higher up the depth chart instead of living exclusively with the third team, which is where he spent basically all of last summer. He is still QB3. He is just a considerably louder QB3. Field Gulls
In the red zone Friday, Josh Jobe went up in the end zone and batted down a Darnold throw meant for Cooper Kupp. Seattle re-signed him at $8 million a year and let Riq Woolen walk to Philadelphia for $12 million. That math is aging beautifully. Yahoo Sports
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
NINERS
Before San Francisco’s first padded practice, assistant head coach Chris Foerster stood in front of the room and told everyone to protect the team and not get into fights. What followed was three separate skirmishes, with Dre Greenlaw and Christian McCaffrey at the center of them. Foerster’s own postgame assessment of his speech: “I did good with that one, right?” Somewhere in the building, a man with a cast on his hand watched all of it happen without saying a word.
CARDINALS
Marvin Harrison Jr. dropped a pass at practice this week and it went nuclear online, negative headlines and all, over a rep in shorts in July that counted for absolutely nothing. To his credit he responded with maybe his best day of camp on Friday. But imagine being a former No. 4 overall pick in Arizona, where a drop in a walkthrough gets more national coverage than anything the franchise has actually accomplished in three years.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
In June 2010, Bellevue police issued a trespassing warning to a Seahawks rookie wide receiver after a 3 a.m. visit to a Top Pot Doughnuts for maple bars. Who was he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Golden Tate. The shop was on the ground floor of his own building, the back door was unattended, and the evidence was eaten before officers arrived. He apologized two days later and said he was very embarrassed.
THIS DAY IN SEAHAWKS HISTORY
1976
August 1, 1976
Fifty Years Ago Today, This Franchise Played Its First Snap
A crowd of 60,825 packed the brand new Kingdome to watch the expansion Seahawks play their first preseason game, against the San Francisco 49ers. Seattle lost 27-20, but only after Jim Zorn was dragged down two yards short of the end zone on the final play of the night. Half a century later the descendants of that team are the defending Super Bowl champions, and the opponent from that first evening is still the one we least want to lose to.
Got a Question? Fire Away.
The mailbag is open and mildly unhinged. Contract math, roster bubble arguments, grievances about 1983, whatever you’ve got. Send it in and I’ll answer one in a future issue.
Fifty years ago today this team played its first snap. Somehow that still feels recent. — The Rooster