Taylor Decker is hurting. All you need as proof is a peek at the Detroit Lions’ injury report. Decker suffered a shoulder injury early in the season—a different injury than the one that required offseason shoulder surgery—and has missed triple the practices (10) than he’s participated in (three). For someone who has been regularly described as one of the toughest players on the team, that says something.
This is not ideal for anyone. The Lions don’t want it. Decker doesn’t want it. But it’s the unfortunate reality of the situation, and it’s what’s best for Decker in both the short and long term in order to get him ready on Sundays.
“I’m fortunate that this organization is receptive to what I need to feel good on gameday,” Decker said. “Dan (Campbell)‘s been awesome about it. It’s not an ideal situation, but I’m able to get what I need throughout the week to be able to go out there and play.”
Gameweek can be a slog, though. Used to spending his full day with his teammates, Decker now occupies a training room for large swaths of time, trying to manage the pain, maintain his strength, and—when he gets to stick with the team in meetings and walkthroughs—stay engaged in the gameplan that week. Decker admits it can be boring, and he credits the team’s training staff for occasionally dealing with his outbursts of frustration.
“You’ve got to give those guys a lot of credit, because I’m in there all the time, and I can be mad and I can be hard to work with,” Decker said. “And they’re incredible. They don’t take it personally.”
Unfortunately, this just seems to be where things are at with Decker. He offered a little hope for eventually getting through this injury and having a plan to return to practice regularly. But it’s clear that it’s going to take some time.
“I think it’s something that I’m going to have to deal with a lot for a good portion of the year, but we have a plan in place right now,” Decker said. “We do have a plan in place of what we’re going to do moving forward to try and mitigate having to deal with it. Because I don’t think—whatever the plan has to be, that’s fine. But I don’t want to not have to practice and not be able to do all the lifts I need to do the entire season.”
The words “chronic injury” combined with an aging offensive lineman will immediately bring into question a player’s long-term viability in the NFL. This spring, Lions center Frank Ragnow retired suddenly at age 29 after no longer wanting to fight a foot injury that plagued his final few years.
Decker admitted to Justin Rogers of Detroit Football Network that when the shoulder injury first happened, in a moment of frustration, he had fleeting thoughts of retiring.
“If you had asked me going into Week 1, I was like, ‘I’m done,’” Decker said.. “I didn’t want to do the same work just because of how I was feeling.”
Those thoughts have since subsided, and he still thinks about a moment from the offseason in which he had a moment of professional clarity during a conversation with workout buddy Zach Ertz. Frustrated with the idea of leaving his wife and two kids behind for the football season ahead, Decker vented to Ertz—who wasn’t having any of it.
“‘You’re doing it because you want to do it,’ Decker recalled Ertz saying. “‘You’re doing it because you’re being, not in a bad way, but you’re being selfish. You’re playing because you want to play.’”
Decker chatted with Ragnow recently about dealing with chronic pain and life after football. But when the topic of retirement comes back into mind with Decker, he’s actually not as much worried about the physical pain. He’s been through that before and believes he can go through it again. It’s that personal part—weighing a Lombardi trophy vs. being a present dad—that has him wondering.
“It’s going to be the mental aspect, especially the family aspect,” Decker said. “I just don’t want to leave the game and then always be wondering or thinking what could’ve been.”
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