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Texans only deepen the mystery on the Andre Johnson injury: Will miss "sometime", consult experts
The mystery around the "hamstring" injury of Andre Johnson only deepened on Monday at Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak's press conference. Kubiak would give few insights on what caused the Texans' lifeline receiver to crumble to the the grass without getting touched Sunday afternoon.
But the little Kubiak did say only reinforced the idea that there may be more to this injury.
"We're still in the evaluation process with Andre," Kubiak said. The coach went on to say that the Texans are in process of getting some second opinions on Johnson's right leg injury. When a reporter asked Kubiak outright if it was unusual to get second opinions on a hamstring injury (after all, there was little talk of second opinions on tailback Arian Foster's recent hamstring troubles), the coach said, "We get second opinions on everything we're doing."
Still, Kubiak admitted "there's big concern" with Johnson. It's probably no surprise that the Texans would play it close to the vest on Johnson's injury. Even after Foster tweeted his own MRI and several independent doctors said that the tailback would likely be out for several weeks, Kubiak insisted that there was a chance Foster would play in the season opener. Right until he didn't.
Foster ended up missing that game, coming back and being ineffective against Miami in Week Two, only to sit out the second half and then miss the entire game against New Orleans in Week Three. In the end, Foster ended up missing just as much time as those MRI-consulted doctors predicted. (CultureMap was the first to report that there was a good chance Foster would miss the season opener).
It's probably better to go by what Johnson's told his teammates rather than any official, purposely vague injury report.
"I talked to Andre a little and he told me he was going to end up being fine," tight end Joel Dreessen told CultureMap after Sunday's game. "It looks like we could be without him for a little while, but he said it wasn't as bad as it looked."
Foster missed most of three regular season games — and more than four weeks overall, he was hurt in a preseason game on Aug. 27 and didn't end up returning full force until Oct. 2 — with his hamstring injury.
"He's going to miss some time," Kubiak said Monday of Johnson. Still, the ever-injury-information-cautious Kubiak would not even declare Johnson out of Sunday's home game against the Oakland Raiders. Instead, the status of No. 80 is being left as a mystery.