Published August 5, 2026 01:47 PM
Old-school coaches will often attribute missed practice time in training camp to serious in-season injuries, like torn ACLs. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Packers linebacker Micah Parsons gave some credence to that notion.
Asked why he thinks his ACL injury happened on what seemed to be a fairly routine play in Week 15 against the Broncos, Parsons said this: “You know, it’s hard to really think — I could just think of it was just accumulative things within my body, pushing through, the no camp , dealing with injuries throughout the season, and I just think my body just was overloaded and — which caused my knee to give out. But, you know, I don’t really think why the situation happened. I think, based off of, you know, how I feel at this point, I feel like a much better player in the sense of how I feel. I feel more stable. I feel stronger.”
Parsons skipped all of training camp last year while waiting for a contract from the Cowboys that never came. Eventually, he was traded to the Packers less than two weeks before the start of the regular season. While the pro-laundry crowd will point to Parsons’s explanation as a reason for players to not hold in while negotiating a new deal, the better view is that both sides should treat the start of training camp as a firm deadline for getting something done, negotiating in good faith toward the agreed-to stroke of midnight, and get the deal done before camp opens.
Most of these deals are going to get done anyway. Why not get them done in a way that ensures the player will be available to properly prepare himself for the season? The entire goal for the player is to obtain the security that comes from shifting the injury risk to the team. The player holds in to avoid that risk.
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If the team is inevitably going to be assuming the risk, why not do it at a time that allows the player to best prepare himself for an injury-free season?
