Steven Jackson Injury Bingo, Round One: The Hip

I’ll give you the free space, which is “Steven Jackson says he should play through an injury he has,” but you’ll have to take all your other markers off the card: It’s time for a new year’s game of Steven Jackson Injury Bingo, the only game that combines disturbingly sharp senior citizens with the St. Louis Rams‘ indefatigably-glib-about-his-health running back, Steven Jackson. Jackson missed the Rams’ first preseason game with a sore hip; it hardly counts, because this was strictly, apparently, a preseason-caution move, but mark “hip” anyway—between “Broken back” and “I will work harder!”

Jackson’s absence in pretend-week one wasn’t really a problem; it gave us a chance to see both Cadillac Williams and Jerious Norwood, his newly identifiable backups, in significant roles, and it gave Keith Toston a chance to complicate the whole thing by looking pretty good. But if he misses pretend-week two this Saturday—well, then you start to worry.

Not that he won’t play, but that the injury is severe enough that he will drive himself further into the ground by attempting to play through it. Here’s hoping you don’t win this year’s game of Injury Bingo by marking the four corners—”15 carries, 13 yards,” “Nah, you could always see that bone,” “Scarlet Fever,” and “Wait, Kenneth Darby?”