Breshad Perriman's Injury Worse Than Originally Thought

After missing eleven practices and the preseason opener, Coach John Harbaugh is still optimistic about rookie receiver Breshad Perriman's chances to play again before the regular season.

"He’ll be back some time here in training camp, hopefully soon," Harbaugh said. "I hate that he’s missing it. I hate that he’s not out here. I’ve got a knot in the pit of my stomach in some ways about it. In other ways, I know it’s out of our control and I put it in God’s hands. Let him take care of it. To me, that’s the best strategy right there."

Perriman, the first round selection out of UCF, has been held out on account of an injured knee. The injury occured on the first day of camp, the specifics of how the injury happened are still unknown. Previously, the injury was regarded as only a minor bruised knee, with the timetable for his return being day-to-day.

However, the injury may be more serious, and Coach Harbaugh acknowledged that by alluding to a potentially strained tendon, "sprain, bruise, tendon or whatever", said Harbaugh just a week ago. A very vague statement indeed. Yesterday's update from 'Harbs' wasn't any more comforting or clarifying either.

"It’s not something that’s going to keep him out for a long period of time, they tell me," Harbaugh said. "If I were a doctor, I would give you more. You come out here, and we expect to have definitive answers about injuries from coaches. I didn’t take those classes in college. I wasn’t interested."

Yikes. This seems to be 'coach speak' at it's finest. His statements offer no clarification, but only confirm that Perriman's injury is more severe.

I, like Harbaugh, am not a doctor either. But we have a doctor on our staff, Dr. Bobby. Here are his thoughts on the matter:

"At this point I can only speculate due to the fact that the Ravens have been fairly non-specific about his condition. They reported that Perriman fell on his right knee while making a catch and was initially diagnosed with just a bruised knee. They listed him as day-to-day following that and John Harbaugh claimed he expected him to return in "a couple days at the most." Nearly two weeks have passed since then and we still don’t have a clear answer about when we can expect him back. Nevertheless, given his mechanism of injury my best bet is that Perriman suffered either a bone bruise or a mild sprain to his posterior cruciate ligament (PCL)."

To put it bluntly, we have no clue what the hell is going on. With the Ravens keeping mum on the details, Perriman's status is up in the air.

Coming into the season, Ravens fans pictured a receiving corps of Steve Smith and Breshad Perriman alongside a to-be-determined third receiver. Perriman not being in the picture was not really a possibility that was considered, because after all, the Ravens drafted him to play.

Yet fans may have to get used to the idea of a Perriman-less team to start the year, as much caution will be applied to the rookie. It's not the most ideal situation, but it's a realistic one.