Redskins should be concerned about Mike Tolbert’s recent comments on Cam Newton

Mike Tolbert commented on Cam Newton’s injuries and said that the Panthers have mismanaged him. Here’s why that matters for the Redskins.

The Washington Redskins have had an injury problem for a few seasons now. While injuries in the NFL are uncontrollable, recovery from them is. The Redskins struggled to help their players return from injury and routinely misjudged timelines for return. Most notable them was Colt McCoy‘s broken leg; the team anticipated he could potentially come back in 4-6 weeks from the injury. It turned into about 10 months.

But this offseason, the Redskins replaced their front office leadership, coaching staff, and training staff as part of a massive overhaul. That meant promoting Kyle Smith, bringing Ron Rivera over from the Carolina Panthers along with several other assistants, and also snagging trainer Ryan Vermillion from Carolina.

On paper, the Rivera-Vermillion team should be an upgrade over the Jay Gruden-Larry Hess duo of the previous six seasons. But is there reason to be concerned with how the Panthers’ leadership handled Cam Newton‘s injury? Former fullback Mike Tolbert thinks so and outlined his reasoning per Joseph Person of The Athletic.

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"They’ve been doing him wrong timing-wise for the past two or three years, if you ask me. It goes back to his shoulder surgery. Everyone knew his shoulder was messed up in the middle of the year two years ago. But they wait until offseason gets ready to start to have shoulder surgery. Makes no sense. Timing’s off.As soon as he got hurt (last) preseason against the Patriots, they were saying, “Oh, he’s got a high ankle sprain.” I looked at it on film carefully. It’s not a high ankle sprain, you could tell that 10 minutes after the play. You knew it’s a mid-foot sprain, Lisfranc, something like that. But you wait ‘til December for him to beg you to have surgery. He shouldn’t have been out there Week 1 and 2. He shouldn’t have been out there probably ‘til Week 4 or 5, at minimum."

Tolbert’s points are fair and a bit concerning. The decisions made regarding Newton are worth questioning and at the very least, it will give fans some food for thought.

In defense of Rivera and Vermillion, it can be difficult to decide when to have a franchise quarterback get surgery. There’s always a risk associated with making that decision, especially if a passer may be able to heal on his own. And perhaps they thought that Newton could do just that.

Overall, the Newton situation looks like a cautionary tale for the Redskins. But for the time being, there’s not much reason to distrust Rivera or Vermillion. After all, they have to be better than the staff that saw 26 Redskins land on IR to close last season, right?

We’ll see what the training staff can do in 2020. But if they can keep players on the field and help improve injury recovery and prevention, the ‘Skins should be in good hands.