Sports and sports-entertainment news breaks frequently during our 24-hour consumption cycle — unless time trudges through the roughly 96 hours that comprise Major League Baseball’s All-Star break, of course.
As such, a short window emerged Thursday morning when New York Jets fans conceivably could channel lyrics to Hulk Hogan’s entrance song before the world learned The Hulkster passed away at age 71.
Luckily, Jets Nation can shelve the sentiment, “When it comes crashing down and it hurts inside,” for another time.
Quarterback Justin Fields merely suffered a dislocated toe in his right foot early in practice Thursday and is expected to be fully recovered well before New York’s Week 1 visit from Pittsburgh.
That it could have been worse should satiate Jets fans. As for other NFL followers, the doings reinforced that we’re back to “The Shield” safeguarding fans from daily life.
A fellow Jet stepped on Fields’ foot. Fields went down, sat on the ground for a spell, and with the help of a trainer limped off a practice field in Florham Park, New Jersey.
OK. Time to panic.
The keenest among Gang Green backers might have seen a silver lining in the moments after Fields waited in an injury tent for a cart to take him to the locker room.
Fields, per reports, sat in the passenger seat. Had he rested in the back seat of the cart, most proverbial bets on him being healthy to start his first season in New York would have been off. He entered the facility under his own power, too.
Rookie Jets coach Aaron Glenn, a longtime former assistant and defensive back, brought some levelheadedness to the matter after practice ended. Consider it good advice for any such incident in Jets workouts — or others around the league — between now and the Sept. 4 season opener between Dallas and Philadelphia.
“When anybody goes down, there’s a lump in my throat,” Glenn said. “I hate injuries for any player. But the thing is, I want to make sure exactly what the injury is before I move forward on my thought process.”
Spoken like a man who appears to have an Instagram account — @aaronglenndc — but merely is following 20 people and has yet to post.
Glenn watched film of the play, and the team’s evaluation soon dovetailed with his personal observation: Fields, his mobile, 26-year-old free agent quarterback, wouldn’t be sidelined for an extended stretch before the season began.
He’s simply day-to-day.
Meanwhile, Tyrod Taylor, who backed up Aaron Rodgers in New York last season, will take the reins at quarterback as the team internalizes the Xs and Os of new offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand’s scheme.
“I think the most important part is, if anything does happen to Justin, I don’t think there’s any drop-off as far as what we want to do when it comes to play,” Glenn said.
That might sound like a forecast of impending doom to the gloomiest of Jets fans.
Time will tell. But with training camps upon us, we know there’ll be no shortage of folks following the bouncing ball.
Or trampled toe.
