Buffalo beat Detroit 41-31 on Thursday night to open the new Highmark Stadium. The Bills will spend Friday worrying about a shoulder instead of celebrating.
DJ Moore went up for a low Josh Allen pass late in the second quarter, came down hard in the end zone, and drove his shoulder into the grass. He rolled onto his back and immediately grabbed at the left side of his collarbone. He was ruled out for the rest of the game.
The Diagnosis
Moore is believed to have suffered an AC joint sprain, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. Doctors do not consider the injury serious. He is considered day-to-day.
His status for Week 3 against the Los Angeles Chargers is legitimately uncertain. He has a chance to play. Nobody is treating it as a lock.
What An AC Joint Sprain Actually Means
The acromioclavicular joint sits where the collarbone meets the shoulder blade. A sprain there is graded by severity, and the low grades are the difference between missing a week and missing a month.
The encouraging detail is that Buffalo’s medical staff did not consider this serious enough to warrant immediate imaging concern. The discouraging detail is that receivers with shoulder injuries have to catch footballs, absorb contact, and brace for landings. Pain tolerance decides a lot of these cases, and so does whether the shoulder is on the arm he extends to make catches.
Buffalo Can Absorb One Week
The Bills are 2-0 and Josh Allen is playing at an MVP level. He accounted for five total touchdowns against Detroit after producing four total scores in a 36-31 Week 1 win over Houston.
Allen has spent his career making average receiving corps look functional. James Cook ran for 135 yards on Thursday, and Buffalo put up 446 total yards and 203 on the ground. This offense is not one injury away from breaking.
The Right Call
Sit him. An AC sprain that gets aggravated in Week 3 becomes a Week 8 problem, and Buffalo’s season is not being decided against the Chargers.
The Bills have a real chance to be the best team in the AFC. Protecting the weapons around Allen through September is how a team gets to January with them. Moore will want to play and the coaching staff should overrule him.
What To Watch
Practice participation early next week tells the story. A limited Wednesday followed by a full Thursday means he plays. Another DNP Wednesday and Buffalo will be listing him as doubtful by Friday.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.