Esks share pain of White’s season-ending ACL injury
It was a short tweet, full of sadness and even pathos, if you knew the player and the situation. “I just wanna ball and be great.” John White posted those words without explanation on Twitter after the game.
It was hard not to have sympathy for him.
Injuries happen in sports, particularly in football. The games go on. Next man up and all of that. But sometimes, one comes along that can give fans pause. And in the case of the Edmonton Eskimos, it seems like one comes up like that every week this season.
White had career year written all over him. He looked to so many unbiased observers to be perfectly positioned to seize not only the year but the career that had so far eluded him.
Now you have to wonder if he’ll end up one of those stories of unfulfilled greatness, of a player who showed glimpses of greatness but could never stay in the lineup long enough to achieve it.
The expectation was there would be thousands of words written about the Eskimos running back this year. But his eight-word tweet, followed by a 26-word news release at 3:15 p.m. Monday, said otherwise:
“Eskimos international running back John White sustained a torn right ACL during Friday’s victory over the Montreal Alouettes. He will miss the remainder of the 2017 season.”
This is what I wrote in the Eskimos’ Game Day program published the day before the game:
“The way the Eskimos went into this season, if you didn’t know the stats, it was like White was a proven veteran, a leagueleading 1,500-yard-a-year running back, the carry-the-ball equivalent of Eskimos leagueleading receiver Adarius Bowman.
“Coaches and teammates spoke of him that way, and the depth chart said that of him all the way to opening day. John White, clearly, has shown them all that. Now he just needs to show the world.”
Due to the pre-print nature of the publication, there was no mention of his 104-yard sensational start to the season.
Now his career stats line in per season rushing yards is going to read: 260, 852, 0, 886 and 112. He had three carries for eight yards before he went down Friday.
In five seasons, he’ll have played 40 games, carried 376 times and recorded 2,110 yards rushing.
Suffering a season-ending injury in the second year of a career is devastating. Suffering two in three seasons is staggering.
White missed the entire 2015 Grey Cup-winning season sustaining a ruptured left Achilles tendon during training camp.
The thing is, going into both seasons, White was poised to ball and be great.
In only nine games in 2014, he was outstanding, winning both Western All-Star and CFL AllStar honours.
Last year, while he struggled returning from his Achilles tendon injury and was replaced by Shakir Bell at one point, when Bell suffered a freak injury on the final day of practice during the week, White returned to the lineup and was all-world once again.
White was named CFL Player of the Week in both Week 15 and 16 and player of the month for October.
Against the Hamilton Tiger- Cats in the East semifinal, he had 20 carries for 160 yards and two touchdowns.
In the East Final in Ottawa, he carried 12 more times for 66 yards.
White had been waiting a while to have his career year. He spoke to your correspondent about it only a couple of weeks earlier.
“I’ve just been waiting my time and being patient, and I feel this is really the year for me to let it all out and be loose like I was in 2015 before I tore my Achilles and like I was at the end of last year. I feel like I have the tools to be great.”
The injury doesn’t just reverberate on an individual level here but in the big picture.
The 2-0 Eskimos have now lost three key starting players and have 16 games to go.
Cory Greenwood, a Canadian obtained to start at the WIL linebacker position to help change the ratio, was ruled out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee early in training camp.
In Game 1, star middle linebacker J.C. Sherritt, the team’s defensive captain and CFL most outstanding defensive player in 2014, was lost for the season after rupturing the Achilles tendon in his left leg.
Head coach Jason Maas said going into this season that it is the deepest team he’s seen in 17 seasons in the CFL.
At this rate, it’s going to have to be.