Photo: Jamie Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports

In the wake of this terrible Teddy Bridgewater news in which he tore his ACL and has other structural damage, it got me thinking. Every single play that we watch as fans could be someone’s last. Maybe for the season. Maybe forever. Teddy’s injury wasn’t even in a game. It was at practice, and no one touched him. Like a lot of ACL injuries, this was non-contact. Often times, those are the worse kind of injuries.

My plea is simple: enjoy every play possible. As fans, we watch a lot of plays unfold. After the play, we talk about it, or we talk to our friends about something else going on, or we take a bite of our Papa John’s personal pan pizza, or sip our beer. We wait for the next play. It is easy to forget that at any moment, a career can be drastically changed.

After every play is finished, if our players are healthy, it is a small victory. It is just something that we never really think about from the stands. We need to start appreciating every single time our guys get up and live to fight another down. Will we think about it more now? I don’t know. Most won’t. I hope that I do. That doesn’t mean you have to outwardly cheer after every play “No injuries!” Just realize that on any play, a player or a team can have everything change.

Michael Bush was well on his way to a record-breaking season. The way he started out, he would be in New York for the Heisman Ceremony and the Cards would be in the National Championship game. He would be a first-round NFL draft pick. One play. One play changed all of that. Yes, there was contact on that play, but one play changed it all for Bush and the Cards in 2006.

We have a Quarterback that likes to run, and he is very good at it. There is a lot of hype for the Cards heading into this 2016 season that starts in less than 48 hours. It doesn’t take much for those expectations to take a drastic hit. Just ask Vikings fans. Teddy was expected to take another step forward in his development this season. Now he will not play a snap in 2016. NFL teams normally don’t recover from injuries like this when they happen so close to the season starting.

Football is a rough sport. And sometimes, the worst injuries happen when there is no contact at all. That’s just the way it is. These guys risk their career every single day to represent the program that we love. All we can do is cheer them on and hope for them to stay healthy and avoid injury. Seems like a no-brainer. But look how quickly it can all change.

You may want to see Louisville light up the scoreboard on Thursday. Maybe hang 70. Maybe get a shutout. I want all of that too. But more importantly, I want our team to be healthy when it is all said and done. We have high expectations for 2016, and I want those expectations to still be in tact as I am walking out of PJCS after the game.

I want to enjoy every play possible.

Go Cards…Beat Charlotte!