Tight End Sidelined Indefinitely
The headlines read: Pitta Injured Again!
Imagine walking in the shoes of Dennis Pitta at this very moment.
You miss 43 of your team’s last 50 meaningful (regular season and playoff) games since earning a ring in Super Bowl 47. Fans, media, teammates and coaches alike write you off and suggest that you call it a career due to a seemingly tragic hip injury. You are given free albeit undesirable advice to put your physical future and your family’s needs ahead of your insatiable desire to return to the field of play as a member of the Baltimore Ravens.
You ignore the unsolicited advice and remain steadfastly determined to prove the world wrong. You grind through the grueling rehab. Consult with doctors. Willingly accept a cap friendly pay cut so that your doubting employer will give you just one last chance to mute all of the doubters.
Despite the fact that your team has drafted 3 tight ends over the last three NFL drafts and signed an accomplished free agent tight end, you get your wish.
Carpe diem.
You grab the opportunity with gusto and you flash the skill set that once made you a fan favorite and more importantly a Joe Flacco favorite. Practices go incredibly smoothly as you snag every ball thrown your way. Your sideline toe-tapping skills haven’t abandoned you and diving catches are still part of your on-field repertoire.
What seemed impossible is now as within your grasp as a soft toss from your quarterback.
Your head coach is pleasantly surprised and admits that you look “like a really good football player out there right now.”
A couple days later you get into a scuffle with a rookie linebacker [Kamalei Correa] and injure your finger. Your head coach almost seems proud of your combativeness.
“Pitta sprains his finger in some kind of little scuffle, and I will say ‘little scuffle’ with an exclamation point. He will laugh about that tomorrow when he reads this. I do like the competitiveness. I like the fact that Pitta is out here making plays, and he’s blocking people, and he’s getting after it. But tempers are going to flare, and we understand that. I want to impress upon – especially in a move-the-ball-type of drill, which is like a game-like situation – how to play smart as well.”
Later you learn that the sprain is not a sprain at all. The bone is broken. Perhaps your spirit is too.
The injury occurred on August 1. It’s now August 25 and you haven’t taken the field since and there’s no end in sight to the most recent unwelcomed hiatus.
“It’s absurd that [the broken finger] even happened,” your head coach says, changing his tune just 3 weeks later.
“We need to get [Dennis] back as soon as we can, but it’s not going to be this week. A bone has to heal. They’re afraid that if he gets it hit again, they might need to put a screw in. It’s just that kind of a fracture.”
All of the rehab and training. All of the hope and desire.
You were nearly there and then on the heels of a momentary lapse of reasoning you are back in that undesirable space – on the sidelines, watching once again. Your immediate future is uncertain, again. And you just might miss more meaningful games, again.
That soft toss from your quarterback hits the ground. Like your comeback, it falls incomplete.
Missed game number 44 lies just around the corner.
How frustrating it must be walking in the shoes of Dennis Pitta.
