Logan Thomas defends Giants’ Kayvon Thibodeaux after avoidable knee injury

Washington Commanders fans everywhere rejoiced Monday when the club activated Logan Thomas from the PUP list. The veteran tight end hadn’t practiced all offseason as he finished recovering from a torn ACL suffered in December.

It’s an impressive recovery for the 31-year-old Thomas. Though he won’t play in the preseason finale and his status for Week 1 is still very much up in the air, his activation suggests he’ll return by Week 2 at the absolute latest; a huge boost considering it was initially feared he wouldn’t return until October.

The next step for Thomas is getting cleared for full contact and clearing the mental hurdle of trusting his surgically-repaired knee. Per Thomas himself, the knee might be stronger than it was pre-surgery, which is very common.

That’ll make clearing the mental hurdle that much easier.

What surely didn’t help matters, though, was the play that injured Thomas got recreated in the Giants-Bengals preseason game, where No. 5 overall pick Kayvon Thibodeaux was left writhing in pain after a low block by Thaddeus Moss.

Commanders TE Logan Thomas reacted to the low block that injured Giants rookie Kayvon Thibodeaux.

Giants fans immediately feared the worst, and understandably so given Thibodeaux’s chilling reaction. The rookie was thankfully seen walking around on the sidelines later in the game and was diagnosed with an MCL sprain that’ll shelve him 3-4 weeks, though he’s visiting Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion to make sure that was the extent of the damage.

Commanders fans will remember this is nearly exactly how Thomas’ season ended against the Raiders. Lined up as a backfield blocker for a run play, Raiders edge rusher dove at Thomas’ knee, which was unsurprisingly crunched.

Thibodeaux was lucky enough to see Moss coming, whereas Ngakoue blindsided Thomas and left the pass-catcher without a chance to brace himself.

"“I think there’s an act of going low and then there’s going too low,” Thomas told reporters Monday. “If you get somebody above the knee, the chances of them getting their leg trapped are a whole lot less. Then if you get ’em below the knee, everything’s just gonna crumble. [The] same thing happened to him, happened to myself, happened to Tyree Jackson in Philly last year.”“We’re actually coached to stay above the knee. It’s more effective that way. Obviously, a chance for injury is a whole lot lower. Chance for injury to the person who’s actually doing the cut block is lower too.”"

Thomas summed it up perfectly. Everyone — or mostly everyone — understands it was a legal  block. The argue is whether it was necessary for a preseason game (probably not) and if it was a  clean play.

By the letter of the law it was clean, but it really puts the receiver of the hit in an impossible situation. How are you supposed to dodge a block like this? Should the NFL ban it entirely and shorten the proverbial strike zone?

The league is clearly more concerned with preventing concussions and head injuries than knee injuries, and rightfully so, but Thomas’ response to Thibodeaux’s unfortunate injury just underline the fact that they’re easily preventable.

Hopefully, Thibodeaux walks away with just an MCL sprain.