PITTSBURGH -- Pittsburgh Steelers right tackle Marcus Gilbert is dealing with an elbow injury he deemed as significant, while defensive end Cam Heyward has a high right ankle sprain.
Cheap Wholesale Adidas Shoes .Both starters vowed Sunday to be ready for the teams regular-season opener in two weeks at Washington.Heyward and Gilbert left Fridays preseason game against New Orleans in the second quarter. Two days later, Gilbert wore a sleeve on his left elbow in the locker room and Heyward had a protective boot on his right foot.I think we have a lot of time and it works in our favor that were playing Monday (in the season opener), Heyward said. Im going to use that to my advantage.Gilbert, who hyperextended his left elbow against the Saints, was also dealing with a shoulder injury to the same arm that forced him to miss time during the preseason. Gilbert said the elbow is something he can play through.Theres no way Im missing that first game, Gilbert said. Ill be there no matter what.Gilbert, the Steelers second-round pick in 2011, missed four games the previous three seasons. He allowed just one sack last season while shutting down several of the top pass rushers in the league, including Super Bowl MVP Von Miller in the regular season and playoffs.Gilbert said he doesnt have to undergo surgery now, but may need it in the future. He is being evaluated by renowned surgeon Dr. James Andrews.I can play on it now, Gilbert said. Its something that just has to heal. Its not going to be something that keeps me off the field.Since entering the NFL as the Steelers first-round pick in 2011, Heyward has appeared in 80 consecutive games, tied for the fifth-longest active streak by a defensive end.I take pride in not missing games, Heyward said. Its Week 1, Im going to be there.Heywards high ankle sprain could jeopardize that streak. He said his injury was in between a mild Grade 1 and moderate Grade 2 sprain.They couldnt differentiate much from where I was right after into where I am now, Heyward said. I should be ready for the game.Heyward was the victim of a cut block against the Saints. He stayed in for another play before leaving the field with an ice bag taped to his ankle.Pittsburgh can ill afford to lose Heyward, a defensive leader who played 88 percent of the teams snaps last season and led the Steelers in sacks the previous two years. Heyward and Stephon Tuitt have teamed to give the Steelers one of the most formidable tandems at defensive end. Tuitt, who enters his third season, has no problem stepping up if Heyward is forced to miss time.Thats the worst-case scenario and I dont think thats going to happen, Tuitt said. But if it did happen, it would be up to me to step in as the leader and do it.Game notes The Steelers placed offensive tackle Jerald Hawkins, their fourth-round pick, on injured reserve with a torn labrum, while quarterback Dustin Vaughan was waived injured. The team also reduced its roster to 79 players prior to Tuesdays league-mandated 75-player deadline. Included on the list was 2014 sixth-round pick Jordan Zumwalt.---AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP-NFL
Cheap Adidas Shoes For Sale . Capitals head coach Adam Oates said Ovechkin was injured in the first period against the Vancouver Canucks on Monday and clarified it was not a head injury.
Adidas Clearance Store . Datsyuk will miss Tuesdays game against New Jersey and could be sidelined longer, while Cleary will likely miss at least the next three games. Its been an injury-plagued season for Datsyuk, who has suited up for just 39 games.
http://www.clearanceadidas.com/ . Ibaka equaled a career high with 20 rebounds, adding four blocked shots and 15 points as the Thunder smothered the Milwaukee Bucks offence in a 92-79 victory Saturday night. Carson Wentz and Dak Prescott look awesome this season, you might have heard. Neither Prescott nor Wentz would have expected to start the year under center for his team when the preseason started, but the injury to Tony Romo and the trade of Sam Bradford opened up starting spots for the two rookie quarterbacks, and here we are. Neither NFC East starter has thrown an interception through his first three starts. Prescott ranks fourth in the league in Total QBR with an 82.5 mark, while Wentz comes in at 11th at 66.0. The two passers teams have combined to start 5-1.Nobody can argue that Prescott and Wentz have been disappointing. Quite the opposite, actually: Draftniks and fans who believed in the two quarterbacks before this years draft have been patting themselves on the back for backing the right horses. Eagles general manager Howie Roseman has garnered credit for trading a pile of draft value to grab Wentz, while the hapless 0-3 Browns are already being dragged through the ringer after trading away the opportunity to draft him with the second overall pick even with all the draft picks now in hand.History also tells us, though, that there are examples of touted quarterbacks who lived up to the hype before fading, some fast.Most recently, Robert Griffin III?looked for all the world to be a superstar after his first season, not just first three games, and the Rams took flak for their decision to trade away the second pick and allow Washington to grab him. That trade turned out to be prescient. Mark Sanchez won his first three starts, including a 16-9 victory over Tom Brady. Ryan Leaf won his first two starts, albeit with middling numbers, before throwing one touchdown against 13 interceptions in his eight ensuing contests as a rookie, in which San Diego went 1-7. You get the idea. There are many others you could point to.We look back now and recognize the obvious flaws in their cases, but at the time, those issues seemed like they were small problems in an otherwise impressive package. Maybe well look back at Prescott and see how he collapsed when he wasnt supported by a dominant offensive line and a great running game, or rue how Wentz leaned into too many big hits and failed to adapt when teams took away his short passes. Its way too early to say.Or is it?Players will always take weird career paths, but on the whole, when can we say with any confidence that a quarterback who is playing at a high level to start his career will continue to play that way? How long does it take for a quarterback to prove his mettle -- or, alternately, how quickly can we identify the ones who dont have it? It would be fair to say that answering the question is an inexact science, but lets take a stab at that exact problem here.Theres no correct way to do this, because one persons definition of success is different from anothers. The methodology I landed on was to sort every quarterback who has thrown 10 passes or more during his first four seasons since entering the league in 1990 into one of six groups, which Ill explain here. The choices are arbitrary, but theyre designed to make it easier to identify successful quarterbacks, and they were made before looking at any of the data on hand.Group 1: The superstars. The no-doubt perennial Pro Bowlers, annual MVP candidates and plausible future Hall of Famers. This group ranges from Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers on the high end to Eli Manning and Carson Palmer on the low end. Obviously, it would be great if Prescott and Wentz ended up here.Group 2: The stars. These are the quarterbacks who put together (or are putting together) lengthy careers as typically above-average regulars, with a year or two where they leaped into the upper echelon. Your typical quarterbacks in this group are guys like Drew Bledsoe, Joe Flacco?and Michael Vick. It would be very exciting for Prescott to end up here given his draft status, and it would be a fair return for Wentz as the second overall pick.Group 3: The flashes. These are passers who have had one or even two big seasons over the course of their careers but were too inconsistent or injury-prone to stay as above-average regulars at the position. The group includes quarterbacks like Colin Kaepernick and Griffin, along with players like Jeff George and Marc Bulger. This is about the lowest Prescott could fall and still be a successful quarterback given his draft return. The Eagles expect more of Wentz after trading so much draft capital for the former North Dakota State star.Group 4: The first-round disappointments. Cant be much clearer than this. The word bust is generally unfair to use given how many variables go into developing a quarterback, but these are the guys who did not become their teams (or any teams) franchise quarterback after being taken in the first round. Its everyone from JaMarcus Russell to Leaf to Johnny Manziel. Obviously, Prescott wasnt a first-round pick, but neither he nor Wentz wants to end up looking similar to the players in this group.Group 5: The to-be-determineds. These are the recent quarterbacks who are still either on rookie deals (such as?Blake Bortles) or in the first year of their second contracts (such as?Brock Osweiler). Its too early to put them in any of the other groups. Its important to separate them out from everyone else, but theyre mostly irrelevant in terms of projecting the long-term performance of Prescott and Wentz; by the time we know what we have with those two, everyone in this group will have his own future resolved, too.Group 6: Everyone else. This is a big bucket of backup quarterbacks and replacement-level journeymen who werent taken in the first round of the draft. Theres no shame in that, of course, but its not the group that either of these promising rookies wants to end up occupying.I went through the game logs of each quarterback who made his debut after 1990, a 25-year sample, and ttracked how they all performed, appearance by appearance.
Adidas Shoes Clearance Sale. . I included only games in which they threw 10 passes or more and contests that took place during the first four years of their career, the length of the typical rookie contract. To measure each players performance, I used adjusted yards per attempt, which is a souped-up passer rating; to adjust it for era, I compared the AY/A to the league average in the year in which it was recorded. So if Aaron Rodgers posted 8.0 AY/A last year and the league average was 7.0, Drew Brees was 14.2 percent above average.Lets test different lengths of time and see how our groups differed in terms of their average AY/A versus the league baseline to see where the stars broke away from the pack. For reference, through three games, Wentzs 8.5 AY/A is 21.4 percent better than the league average of 7.0, while Prescotts 7.9 AY/A figure is 12.9 percent ahead of the mean.What we see after four games:?Lets start with what qualifies as a round number in football. A quarter of a season seems way too early to declare anything, but even after four games and as few as 40 pass attempts, we can already see a pretty notable difference between the absolute top-level stars and the vast majority of other rookie quarterbacks. Thats not to say there arent exceptions. Both Eli and Peyton Manning were messes as rookies. Palmer sat the entirety of his rookie year (zero throws)?and still struggled during his first four starts.On the other hand, Jake Locker was a force of nature in his first four appearances, posting 8.5 AY/A with five touchdowns against one pick. Tim Tebow was effective in his own weird way by throwing downfield without even considering his rushing value. Dave Brown of the Giants went 3-1 with a completion percentage and level of efficiency that he would fail to match the rest of the way. Theres a gap, and plenty of examples suggest that we would struggle to tell the transcendent players from the eventual disappointments. And the second tier of useful long-term starters is actually still bad.What we see after eight games:?With eight games in the books, everyone improves notably besides the busts, who never really get any better. There are still effective first-round busts like Patrick Ramsey and Andre Ware, but just nine of the 31 players in the group post an AY/A better than league average over their first eight appearances. Twelve of the 17 superstars are on the positive side of the ledger, with Donovan McNabb the low man on the totem pole. We also still really cant separate the pretty good long-term contributors from the guys who are merely off to hot starts.What we see after 16 games:?With a full 16 games of data to look at, the useful quarterbacks in the group really begin to pull away. Perhaps more accurately, the disappointing picks have revealed themselves to be mistakes. The only players in Group 4 to post AY/A figures 10 percent better than league average over their first 16 games are Ramsey and Tim Couch, each of whom had his career waylaid by coaching changes, pass-protection issues and injuries. Leaf, meanwhile, has seven touchdowns against 24 picks in the qualifying games with a AY/A 43.3 percent below league average. Figured something out there.What we see after 32 games: It looks like it really takes two full seasons worth of data to get a real sense of separation between useful, productive quarterbacks and those who failed to live up to expectations. Unsurprisingly given their name, the flashes in the pan have regressed back toward league average, while the useful contributors have showed the consistency that separates them from those inconsistent options. The best first-round bust is David Carr, whose AY/A is 6.7 percent above league average. The worst superstar is Brees, who is 3.6 percent below league average. Its worth remembering that Brees struggled enough during his first two seasons as a starter that the Chargers handed the job over for a time to Doug Flutie before acquiring Philip Rivers in a draft-day trade during the 2004 offseason.It wasnt until his fourth season in the league that Brees played like a Pro Bowl quarterback, and hes been excellent ever since.The lesson to take away from all of this, as best I can tell from history, is that the excitement around Prescott and Wentz is justified, in part because theyve managed to avoid failing immediately. The washout rate for players who struggle at the very beginning of their professional careers, even first-round picks, is higher than I expected. Whether by a lack of opportunity or an inability to adapt, cases like that of Brees are few and far between.At the same time, its way too early to crown Prescott and Wentz as future superstars and come up with trade packages for Romo while laughing at the Browns. Theyre not going to go the rest of their respective careers without throwing an interception. Theyre going to lose key pieces, as Prescott is likely to experience this weekend with Dez Bryant unlikely to play. Theyll go down early in games and have to throw against teams teeing off on passes to catch up. Theyll take hits and have to play at 80 percent, and even worse, they might develop bad habits with relation to the pass rush to avoid getting hit again. Defenses will make adjustments, and Prescott and Wentz and the ex-quarterbacks who coach them will make adjustments, and we may very well end up in a different place from where we all started.As tempting as it is to crow about a future secured, Cowboys and Eagles fans should probably wait at least until the end of the season before they start naming their children Dak and Carson. Put it this way: If everything works out right, theyll have plenty of time to brag about their new franchise quarterbacks.
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