Fantasy Football Preseason Injury Report (2021)

Football is back, and that, unfortunately, means that injuries have returned as well. We’ve already seen it over the offseason with players like Michael Thomas to devastating preseason injuries to the likes of Travis Etienne. With another week of preseason action awaiting, there will likely be more ailments that carry significant fantasy impact.

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It’s a good thing that we’ll have you covered all season long with Dr. David Chao, The Pro Football Doc. Dr. Chao will join us each Friday on the FantasyPros Football Podcast through the season to break down the week’s injuries.

In fact, Dr. Chao gave us a sneak peek of his awesome injury analysis when he joined Dan Harris on a recent podcast. Tune into the 47-minute mark to hear the Dr.’s preseason take and outlook on several high-profile fantasy players.

Preseason Injury Report 2021

Dr. Chao and the team at The Pro Football Doc have been busy this preseason. If you head over to their site and register for a free account, you can access their report for the complete 32 team preseason injury report! The best part? This is a living document! Dr. Chao and the team keep this updated throughout the preseason so you are ready for your fantasy football draft.

Here are a few updates on notable players entering the new season.

Dak Prescott (QB – DAL)
The report out of Dallas is that the second MRI shows the shoulder is healing well. This fits with our earlier post of progression, where he is slowly increasing some light throwing, and he projects to be ready for week one although certainly he is not 100% yet. Note the MRI report says that it is healing well, not healed completely and we would not expect Dak to play in the next preseason game with an outside chance of limited snaps in the final game. We still anticipate he will be full go ahead of the week one regular season game as anticipated from the get go. However, this certainly was much more than day to day, or “fatigue” as the team initially indicated when it first happened at the start of camp.

Michael Thomas (WR – NO)
Why did Michael Thomas and the Saints delay ankle surgery until June? When things don’t make sense from the outside, that usually just means we don’t have all the information yet. Teams, players and medical staff are not stupid. They sometimes make decisions that don’t work out, but no one intends to make a poor choice. It turns out Thomas went AWOL from the team for 3 months. Right now, the delay of ankle surgery seems to be a bad decision. The injury could have been healed by Week 1, but now his recovery will stretch well into the season. The Saints star wide receiver suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 1 last season and missed six games. He returned Week 9, but
re-injured the same ankle in Week 14 and missed the last three regular-season games. He played in the Saints’ Wild Card round victory over the Bears before being held catch-less in the Saints’ Divisional round loss to the Buccaneers. It was widely reported that he was likely to need surgery to his deltoid ligament and high ankle. There were no reports of surgery until now. Unfortunately, with the report of ligament repair, this will knock Thomas out for a major portion of the season. Expect him to start the season on the Reserve/PUP list, meaning a minimum six-week absence. It would be good news if he could return to form by midseason. It would not surprise me if he missed a majority of games and might not return to 100% until late. Before everyone jumps on Thomas or his doctors, let’s get the whole story. Perhaps the thinking was that the ankle would heal with more rest, but that just never happened. Thomas was said to be rehabbing during mini-camp. In my time as a head team physician, we often tried to let injuries heal in the offseason. However, I would set a timeline. For example, I would let a player who might need an ankle scope go until June, as the recovery would be anticipated to be 4-6
weeks. For an ankle ligament repair surgery, I would have set that timeline much earlier, in March, due to the potential 4-6 month recovery. If the team doctors did anything wrong (NB: we have not come to that conclusion), the Saints won’t be shy about it. Head coach Sean Payton has publicly fired his orthopedic doctors over less. In the end, we will ultimately find out what happened. Right now, the Saints — already without Drew Brees — have taken another major blow, rumors now confirmed that he had ducked Saints brass all offseason. The point is now the Saints will be lucky to have a healthy Thomas for the back half of the season.

Saquon Barkley (RB – NYG)
The stud RB tore his ACL and MCL Week 2 in a horrid week that saw 7 ACL tears league-wide. Barkley also had meniscus surgery and started training camp on PUP this offseason, leading some to have concerns about his readiness. We have posted and written about Barkley extensively, and while we believe he is likely to have a delayed start to the 2021 season, should round into form by the second half of the year. Despite his hard work, the reality is 2022 will be his bounce-back year. Hopefully, he can avoid compensation muscle injuries as he tries to return.