Mason's Mailbag: Recalling injuries weirder than Noah Fant’s

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I am still curious about what would be the top 5 of the NFL or in the Broncos history. That would make a nice Mason’s Mailbag question. #AskMase

— Fabio Mantelli (@insanisMantelli) October 26, 2019

Indeed, it would, and this Mailbag is here for you, the loyal reader.

Truth be told, Noah Fant’s injury isn’t even in my top five for weirdest football injuries. And even if it were tied for fifth, it would lose out to Alvin Harper’s similar injury to his finger in 1996 while he was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In that incident, a team trainer sliced open the woebegone receiver’s finger, adding to his festering fire of frustration that had been building since the Bucs signed him as a free agent a year earlier. (To this day, a fair amount of Bucs fans speak ill of Harper, but I tend to empathize with him. At the time, it was a franchise just taking its initial steps toward competence and cromulence — in “Simpsons” parlance).

No. 5: P.J. Alexander’s ATV incident

I liked Alexander when he was a Bronco in the mid-2000s and thought he had a chance to become a starter. So this one is not funny … and it’s more unfortunate than anything else.

During the 2005 offseason, Alexander joined some teammates to go riding on ATVs. As told in Stefan Fatsis’ book “A Few Seconds of Panic,” Alexander “cleared a small hill, then squeezed the brake too hard or hit a log … [and then] the right rear of the ATV filled toward him. P.J. leaped out, landed on his left leg and rolled down the hill.”

He tore his anterior cruciate ligament, ending his 2005 season four months before it began. He didn’t make the team in 2006, although he returned in 2007 as a backup.

Alexander lingered on the fringe of the NFL for a bit, he was never the same player as he was before the injury. His chance to become a key NFL contributor was lost forever.

No. 4: Gus Frerotte sprains his neck head-butting the padding in celebration

You can’t make any list of weird injuries without citing this from “Sunday Night Football” in 1997. Before the injury, Frerotte had established himself as Washington’s starting quarterback, having beaten out 1994 first-round pick — and future U.S. Congressional Representative — Heath Shuler for the first-team gig. Washington finished the previous season 9-7 — its first winning season in four years — and looked like it was playoff-bound in 1997.

Then Frerotte decided to celebrate a touchdown run by lowering his head and using his helmet as a battering ram into the wall padding that surrounded the field at what was then known as Jack Kent Cooke Stadium (and isn’t that a classier name than FedExField, anyway?).

Before you could say, “You idiot!” — which I yelled at the television while watching this travesty — he was out for the game. Jeff Hostetler, near the end of his career, replaced Frerotte, and Washington could muster only a tie that proved decisive as they missed out on a wild-card spot a half-game.

No. 3: LaRon Landry’s paintball incident

In 2007, Landry missed part of Washington’s offseason work when he took a paintball pellet in the groin during a club-sanctioned “team-building” event. As we’ve seen over the last 20 years, even benign events like this become disasters when Washington’s NFL team is involved.

No. 2: Bill Gramatica’s doomed celebration

This one hurts a bit. Like me, Gramatica attended the University of South Florida. And when the Arizona Cardinals drafted him in 2001, I was convinced they had found their placekicker for the next 15 years.

The younger brother of then-Bucs kicker Martin Gramatica looked like he would have a lengthy and distinguished career based on his play during his 2011 his rookie season. Bill Gramatica hit 80 percent of his field-goal attempts and all of his extra points, displaying a cannon-strength leg in the process. Then he tore his anterior cruciate ligament while celebrating a made field goal against the New York Giants. He kicked for one more full season and parts of two others, but he was never the same, especially from long distance.

And finally, No. 1 …

Chris Hanson, Jacksonville Jaguars, 2003

Jack Del Rio did many things right in rebuilding the Jaguars in the 2000s. But putting a tree stump and an axe in the Jacksonville locker room was not among them.

Del Rio wanted to underscore the concept that his players must “keep chopping wood,” a noble sentiment for a club that needed to continue plowing forward in the wake of three consecutive losing seasons. Hanson, the team’s punter, swung the axe and promptly damaged his right foot, ending his 2003 season.

As far as I’m concerned, Hanson retired the trophy. Frankly, the axe and tree stump should be displayed in Canton.

And who would have thought I would make two Del Rio references in four days of content here at DNVR — one on the podcast and one here? Man, I miss that guy. He’s a good fellow.

I agree 100% with your uniform ideas. I also wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of permanent memorial to Pat Bowlen like the Bears, Lions, and Raiders have for former owners.

— mmannie

Don’t expect that to happen. The Broncos could have blown up the tributes to Pat Bowlen this year on the uniform and chose not to, in part to respect the understated ethos that Bowlen championed.

In general, I’m in favor of such tributes for founding owners or owners deeply involved with the development of their teams and the league, but nothing more. (Bowlen, thus, would qualify in the second category.) The “GSH” letters on the Bears’ uniform, the Lamar Hunt/AFL patch on the Chiefs’ uniform and the “AL” sticker on the Raiders’ helmets are perfect. The problem with the Lions is that William Clay Ford was not a founding owner; he bought the team outright in 1963 (the sale was completed on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated — Nov. 22, 1963). Also, unlike Bowlen and the others, he will almost certainly not be a Hall of Famer.

Another thing with Halas, Hunt and Davis is that these were titans of the sport. Halas and Davis were integral to the development of the professional game — Halas in its formative years, Davis in the AFL, which was responsible for accelerating expansion and bringing the game to its current scope. (Remember, Davis was also an AFL commissioner for a time and was involved with the merger.)

Hunt was a promotional wizard who taught the entire sport about how to involve sizzle and pizzazz and turn football from a game into an event that was a celebration of that city’s culture, a true bonding ritual for an entire community and region. I don’t think Ford, whose club’s lack of success likely ensures that he will never sniff the Hall of Fame, rises to the level of the others who have the permanent tributes.

Hello from the biggest Broncos fan in San Antonio! I moved to Denver from Kenya when I was 7, and immediately became a Denver sports fan. Moved to San Antonio in 2007, but stuck with my Broncos. I subscribed a few weeks ago and I’m loving having access to everything now.

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple weeks now and I want to see what you think. Do you think the Broncos as an organization overreacted to getting blown out by Seattle in the Super Bowl? Because I feel like Elway walked away from that game thinking the only way to have sustained success in the NFL is with a dominant defense. Winning the Super Bowl with a great defense a couple years later probably confirmed that theory for him, and he seemed to basically ignore the offensive side of the ball for the next couple years. (Mark Sanchez, Trevor Siemian, Paxton Lynch, Case Keenum.) In my opinion, Elway overreacted to a fluky blowout loss in which we were missing several key starters (Von Miller, Chris Harris Jr., Ryan Clady, etc). I feel that great offense is a more reliable way to have year to year success in the NFL, because relying solely on a great defense results in basically no margin for error. I think that was one of Elway’s mistakes in his team building philosophy, and one of the reasons the offense has been anemic for the past several years.

— DavidFleurant

First of all, all of us here want to extend our deepest thanks to you for subscribing and joining the DNVR family!

Second, I don’t think you can say Elway ignored the offensive side of the ball in the wake of the Super Bowls. The Broncos did emphasize defense in 2014 and 2015, yes, but in those years, they doled out a massive contract to re-sign Demaryius Thomas and procured Emmanuel Sanders in free agency. (Sanders, remember, was a bit of a projection after the the Broncos elected to let Eric Decker walk in free agency in 2014. They gambled on him being able to ascend from the No. 3 receiver role in Pittsburgh, and that dice roll paid off.)

Then, after Super Bowl 50, the focus turned to offense. The Broncos’ highest-paid free-agent acquisitions in terms of average per-year value in each of the last four years were offensive players. Three of their four first-round picks since Super Bowl 50 were offensive players, starting with Lynch. They devoted resources to offense, but the results haven’t been fruitful. Lynch was a bust. Russell Okung only stayed at left tackle for a year. Ron Leary has battled injuries. Garett Bolles is still working to find his groove. Case Keenum regressed to his pre-Minnesota form. Ja’Wuan James hasn’t been healthy.

The bottom line is this: If Lynch had been what they expected, much of the mess wouldn’t have happened. Great offense in today’s NFL is a reliable path to success, as you note, but the most important key to that level of offensive production is a franchise quarterback. You might have shaky seasons — look at Green Bay in 2017 and 2018 — but you can bounce back quickly once you get some of the other factors right (and again, look at Green Bay now with an upgraded defense and a new head coach).

Until the Broncos find that franchise quarterback, they will be trying to return to the Super Bowl with a non-existent margin for error. The Broncos’ Super Bowl 50, fueled by defense carrying a struggling offense, was the outlier. That is why I keep coming back to this idea: If they can’t crawl back into playoff contention, they must get Drew Lock some work down the stretch; it is essential to learn if he has the potential to be the franchise’s linchpin.