Jairus Byrd injured his meniscus (knee) at practice today and will have surgery to repair it. That means he’s headed to IR and is out for the season. While Byrd created the lone turnover the defense has to this point (a forced fumble of Julio Jones that Corey White recovered), his play was largely disappointing and certainly not worthy of what was at the time the largest contract in NFL history for a safety. Honestly I think in the short term the Saints could benefit from getting Rafael Bush on the field more. In the long term, if Byrd was ever going to play as well as he’s capable of, it’s a huge blow. Now I’m not ready to call this signing a huge bust officially, unlike Ralph Malbrough, because a meniscus injury is something athletes typically recover from and come back to play well. Chris Paul is one example. It’s nowhere near the severity of an ACL, Achilles or some of the other possibilities. But it’s still serious, obviously, and right on the heels of his back surgery it’s not a good sign.
This defense was already in shambles and this won’t do much to improve it. Marcus Ball is on the mend and his return will help fill in. But the semi good news is that Rafael Bush was a starter quality player to begin with. He’s not a peak level Byrd, but he’s a more than capable player, and frankly the tackling has been so bad that the Saints will actually benefit from an improvement in last line of defense tackling right now. I’m not downplaying the injury at all, though. This hurts. And it stings most because this was Loomis’ big offseason investment and it just went up in smoke. Hopefully he can return next year and play better than the four games he gave the Saints in 2014.
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