Everyone around town seems to be talking or writing about Ravens rookie receiver Breshad Perriman. Well, everyone except the Ravens.
Unfortunately for Perriman, a lot of the publicity has been negative -- he's being called a “bust” and “soft.” It’s really unfair to the kid, because all he is trying to do is play through an injury.
The Ravens, though, could make the situation better for Perriman. Since he was injured during the first week of training camp, we have heard very little about the injury.
At first, coach John Harbaugh said the injury was a bruise and that Perriman could return to practice the next day. Then, it was called a sprain. An MRI in August revealed no additional damage, and Harbaugh said the injury was just healing more slowly than the Ravens had expected. But we haven’t had many updates since.
It is fair to assume that the Ravens might have initially diagnosed the injury wrong or maybe the medical staff overlooked a past injury before the Ravens drafted him with the No. 26 overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft.
You can reach almost any conclusion because Harbaugh doesn’t want to go into much detail. The situation could be made a lot easier if the Ravens had some type of news conference with either Harbaugh or Perriman available to answer questions.
When Houston running back Arian Foster suffered a groin injury in August, he met with the media within days to discuss the injury. When Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger got hurt Sunday, he met with reporters on Tuesday to talk about how it happened and the diagnosis.
With Perriman, he has been like a ghost. He showed up at practice last week and disappeared this week. He hasn’t appeared near a podium. And then when Harbaugh gets questioned about it, he gives you the old Vinnie Barbarino routine from the “Welcome Back, Kotter” TV show: “What?” “When?” “Where?”
It just adds to the speculation that the Ravens bombed on the pick. No one knows that for sure and we’ll never know until the kid steps on the field. But the Ravens could have handled this differently. It’s unfair to Perriman, who has moved to a new city and wants to call Baltimore his home.
This couldn’t have been the start he imagined.