Nobody has played a game that counts. Twelve clubs have already lost a player who mattered.
The pre-season is supposed to be the harmless part. Nothing is at stake, starters play sparingly, and the results are forgotten by Tuesday. Then you look at the list of players whose 2026 seasons have already been altered or ended, and the harmlessness starts to look like a marketing position.
Ricky Pearsall is gone for the year. The San Francisco receiver had PCL surgery after swelling refused to settle, and the club moved so quickly to re-sign Deebo Samuel that the replacement was in place almost before the news had circulated. Graham Mertz tore an ACL against the Chargers and is out for the season. Jalon Walker's torn ACL ends Atlanta's season before it starts. New Orleans has lost two: Dillon Radunz and Bryan Bresee, both to ACL tears, both in practice. Laremy Tunsil tore a triceps and needs surgery. Marcus Mariota sprained an MCL and is out for the rest of the pre-season. Minnesota have lost Jamal Adams for the season to a torn quadriceps tendon, where Kevin O'Connell's public assessment, that the initial examinations don't look good, is about as bleak as a head coach gets in August.
And the games have barely begun.
The part nobody blames
Whenever this happens, the argument that follows is always about the exhibition games: why play them at all, why risk anything for a result that doesn't count?
It's the wrong target. Look at where these injuries actually occurred. Pearsall's knee gave way in camp. Tunsil went down in practice. Walker was carted off during drills. Radunz and Bresee both went in practice. Baltimore's Nate Wiggins was carted off a practice field. Chicago's Coby Bryant picked up a knee injury in practice that will cost him eight to ten weeks.
The pre-season games take the blame because they are the visible part: televised, watched, easy to point at. But much of this summer's most serious damage has happened on closed practice fields with no cameras and no scoreboard, in padded sessions and joint practices that are, by design, more physically demanding than a fourth-quarter exhibition series in which most of the participants are fighting for a roster spot. Abolish the pre-season tomorrow and this list barely shortens.
What a torn ligament means now
Set against all that is a genuinely good story, and it deserves equal billing. Malik Nabers is practising. The Giants receiver tore an ACL last season and is not merely back on the field but running routes ahead of his projected schedule. Micah Parsons, recovering from ACL and meniscus surgery, went on record naming Week 6 as a realistic return. Not a club statement, not a leaked timeline: the player himself, putting a date on it.
Twenty years ago, a torn cruciate was understood as a career event. The player disappeared for a year, and the version who came back was usually a diminished one. That is simply no longer the default. Reconstruction and rehabilitation have improved to the point where an ACL is no longer automatically viewed as a lost year, with many players now returning inside nine to twelve months.
What it actually costs
The clubs that will feel this most are not necessarily the ones who lost the best player. They're the ones with no one behind him. San Francisco could absorb Pearsall because a Deebo Samuel was available. Houston lost its backup quarterback and had to sign a veteran off the street. New Orleans losing two starters within days of each other is the sort of run that reshapes a season quietly, in ways that only become visible in November.
That's the real function of the pre-season, and it explains why coaches keep playing it despite everything above. Not to win anything, but to find out who the club actually has when the answer suddenly matters.
Sources: ESPN, NFL.com, CBS Sports, NFL Network, club statements. Current to 17 August 2026.
Printed in Issue 3 of The Grid and released free on 11 September 2026. The text is as it appeared in the magazine, lightly edited for the web.