It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…
The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.
CLICK HERE to see the full 5 o’clock club archive
I just finished watching the 8 episodes that comprise the RECEIVER series on Netflix (the followup to last year’s “Quarterback”). I enjoyed the current series, especially from Episode 3 onward.
One thing that stood out to me from the Receivers series was the number and severity of injuries that the players seem to routinely suffer.
During the very first episode, we saw how Amon Ra St. Brown suffered a toe injury against Seattle that left him having to play with steel plates in his cleats. Then it was a torn oblique the following week—leading him to play the next two games in immense pain despite tearing his oblique muscle off the bone.
While injuries are no laughing matter, St. Brown did leave us with one notable quote that cements his devotion to the game and more importantly, his hatred of one rival NFC North team. With a smirk on his face, describing how he is managing the pain, he stated: “Painkillers is something that I really don’t like to take unless… unless it’s the Packers.”
But painkillers were, in fact, something that the receivers relied on heavily during the ‘23 season, as shown on the Netflix series.
A particularly poignant behind-the-scenes shot showed the Raiders’ receiver, Davante Adams, suffering from a shoulder injury and slumped against a stadium hallway wall before he opts for a Lidocaine injection to re-enter the game. At one point in the show, Adams explains the extent of the ailment to his teammates. Offensive lineman Greg Van Roten tells Adams he dealt with a similar injury a few seasons earlier and was still dealing with the pain. “Well, that’s comforting,” Adams quips.
The scenes of Adams barely able to move before going into the locker room, followed by No. 17 putting on his helmet as he exits the locker room and sprints back out onto the field after getting the shot seemed to me eerily reminiscent of the scenes in North Dallas Forty — a 1979 film about the “industry” of NFL football — in which the running back, Delma Huddle (played by Tidewater’s own Tommy Reamon) goes against his principles and takes an injection in his knee to get onto the field of play, with disastrous personal results.
We get a near-repeat of the injury & return sequence in the final episode of the Netflix series when tight end George Kittle tells Kyle Shanahan to pull him from the championship game against the Chiefs because he can’t lift his arm. Trainers take Kittle to the locker room, give him an injection, and he emerges moments later like Superman from a phone booth, putting on his helmet as he sprints back to the sideline where he tells Shanahan that he’s ready to play again.
The show also reveals that Deebo Samuel hurt his hamstring early in the third quarter of the Super Bowl, but, given the magnitude of the game, stayed in, apparently without the magic of painkillers.
In some cases we saw in the Receiver series, there was nothing to be done to get the player back on the field. For example, Justin Jefferson struggled with injuries in ‘23, and we get an up-close-and-personal look at those struggles. Netflix shows us what he went through after he suffered a hamstring injury against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 4. Early in the fourth quarter, he slips while running a route, goes down grabbing his leg and immediately knows something is wrong. He limps off the field, talks with trainers and heads to the injury tent. He tells the training staff he heard a pop. Jefferson would eventually go to injured reserve for the first significant injury of his professional career.
When Jefferson comes back from IR, he almost immediately suffers a scary chest injury at Las Vegas that has him spitting up blood on the sideline. I remember watching that game live during the season and seeing video reports (on the broadcast or on Twitter, I’m not sure which) of the ambulance taking Jefferson to the hospital before the game was over. There was no magic bullet to immediately get JJ back on the field with either of these injuries.
A constant theme for Davante Adams in the first few episodes (until head coach Josh McDaniel is fired and Antonio Pierce is elevated to interim HC), is the danger of injury he is facing because of Jimmy Garappolo’s habit of exposing Adams to big hits. “I gotta get the fuck outta here before I lose my fucking life,” Adams says on the sideline during a Week 6 game against the New England Patriots. “I ain’t never been hit this many fucking times in my career. Every game, I get fucked up.”