Steven Jackson Injury: Jackson Missed St. Louis Rams Loss For "Long Term" Reasons

Steven Jackson’s absence might have been the reason the St. Louis Rams‘ high-flying offense kept sputtering out when it came time to score from the red zone, but if there’s any silver lining round that particular cloud it’s this: Jackson’s thinking long-term, for once. Turf Show Times takes an important quote from his Twitter: He wants to play—he’s still Steven Jackson, after all, who last year was almost constantly suffering from one nagging injury or another—but he has to “be smart about the season.” 

That’s an important perspective for the Rams’ workhorse to have. Maybe if everything had gone perfectly with Jackson the Rams could have come away with a win on Monday Night Football. But if they hadn’t—if Jackson had reaggravated an injury that had kept him from practicing all week already—this would have just been an ugly loss made even uglier.

It was brutal to watch Cadillac Williams sputter out after his promising Week 1 performance, and more brutal still to watch him miss that lateral—but it would have been worse to have seen all of that after Jackson went down grabbing his leg again.