Armchair Quarterback: Is Holmes back at 100 percent?
If you listen to Priest Holmes, his hip injury of last season is a thing of the past as he advised fantasy leaguers to take him first this year.
If you will recall, Holmes missed the last couple of games last season with what was thought to be a deep hip bruise. The injury immediately brought comparisons with the career-ending injury suffered by Bo Jackson years ago in the playoff game with the Bengals. Jackson eventually ended up having hip replacement, thereby ending the football and baseball career of one of the great two-way players.
During the offseason, speculation was further sparked around Holmes when the supposed deep bruise kept giving him pain. Doctors later did another MRI and determined there were some floating bodies in his hip, requiring a minimally invasive surgery to remove them. The procedure put Holmes on crutches for about a month recently, begging the question to many football enthusiast as to whether he’d be ready for this season.
Granted, all eyes will be on Holmes during pre-season to see how the hip responds to contact; however, if his assessment is anywhere near true, he should be able to go. This is especially important given the impact this guy had when he was health last year. As far as fantasy ball, there was nobody even close to his numbers. As for his team, he pretty well had them making the playoffs before he went down.
For Dick Vermeil’s Chiefs, Holmes is the second version of Marshall Faulk. Without the break away threat of Holmes, the Chiefs will be mired in mediocrity. With him healthy in the line up, and with a healthy Trent Green at quarterback, I believe they are a playoff team even in the rugged western AFC division where the Raiders, Broncos and Chargers are all contenders.
By the way, while I’m on the west, let’s not forget the Chargers and Drew Brees picked up a huge free agent during the offseason with the signing of wideout David Boston. Just like Holmes, he’s returning from injury but speculation is that he will do well. Unlike running backs, receivers traditionally have a much quicker rehab time from injuries since they don’t take as many bumps every play. Plus, this Boston kid is huge for a wideout and has arms as big as most men’s thighs.
Boston was part of the Cardinals financial purging which also saw them also lose their long-time quarterback Jake Plummer. All they got in return was an aging Emmit Smith. If the Cards aren’t the worst team in the league…well, they are.
Of course by the same token it will be interesting to see how Plummer works in the Bronco system. Denver basically hired this guy on spec seeing he’s floundered away in Arizona for years, getting nothing done. Some argue he had no offensive line, but hey, at one point he had one of the best receiving corps in the game out there and did nothing.
It’s going to be a real sink or swim thing since the Broncos released Brian Griese (now a Dolphin) to pick up Plummer. It won’t take us long to find out if it was the team or the player out in Arizona since Plummer will have a good offensive line and superb receiving corps in Denver, not to mention a top notch backfield with Clinton Portis. No excuses this time, Snake. Sad when you realize that Cuba Gooding Jr. (from his role in the movie Jerry McGuire) is still the most famous Sun Devil in the world.