The Cleveland Browns saw their worst-case scenario come true Monday night in Pittsburgh when star running back Nick Chubb had to be carted off the field after suffering a serious knee injury during a run near the goal line. Chubb was hit in the knee by Minkah Fitzpatrick and immediately writhed in pain, with the replay apparently so gruesome that ESPN chose not to show it.
Naturally, there are fears of serious damage to Chubb’s knee, and subsequently, fans and players have taken to social media to give Chubb their best as he almost certainly prepares for a long rehabilitation process. There was also, as always, an eye on the various major NFL news stories as fans wondered how serious Chubb’s injury was and what the feared damage might be. Although we probably won’t find out until Tuesday, when an MRI is performed, there will sometimes be reports of the initial diagnosis.
So when Adam Schefter opened a tweet with “Nick Chubb dislocated his left knee and tore his MCL, PCL and LCL with cartilage damage”, many assumed he was talking about the injury Chubb had just suffered undergo. Instead, Schefter awkwardly recalled the injury the star suffered in college when he suffered the same torn knee against the Tennessee Volunteers in 2015, information he should have led with.
Nick Chubb dislocated his left knee and tore his MCL, PCL and LCL with cartilage damage on October 10, 2015 against Tennessee. He injured the same knee tonight against Pittsburgh.
–Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 19, 2023
The replies and quote tweets are almost all people yelling at Schefter for scaring them into thinking Chubb had completely shredded his knee, when in fact we don’t know the details. There are plenty of people who could tweet something like that — although almost certainly with better wording — but one of the league’s best reporters who routinely breaks injury news first isn’t one of them.