Washington continues to be down on its injury luck after Derrius Guice hype derailed

An NFL season always works itself out to be a war of attrition. With that in mind, it shouldn’t necessarily be shocking that preseason and training camp are also minefields of serious injuries.

Because August presents the first signs of life in football following months of latency, many fans seem to forget that injuries are an everyday, or at least an every week, part of the sport. For football fanatics, so much of the early summer is spent on the purely speculative — Who is going to be a breakout force in fantasy? Who is going to shine on a new team? — that the more grim realities are easily forgotten in the run-up to a new season.

That’s just one of the reasons why the season-ending ACL injury suffered by Washington running Derrius Guice was keenly felt around NFL fandom. A 2018 second-round pick out of LSU, Guice was pegged by many analysts to be the starting running back for the 'Skins by Week 1. As any fantasy football regular knows, pinpointing sleepers is one of the most important tasks before a draft. Because Guice was considered a soon-to-be starting back bound to get the heft of carries, a commodity increasingly in short supply in today’s game, the hype on him snowballed so dramatically that by the time of his injury he couldn’t even count as a sleeper anymore.

Washington has several new faces on the offense for 2018, including a new quarterback. None of the starting skill players, however, are anything close to a guarantee for significant stats. The Redskins' leading rusher in 2017, Samaje Perine, ran for just 603 yards on 3.4 per carry. Their top receiver, Jamison Crowder, didn’t even crack 800 yards last season. The team signed receiver Paul Richardson, formerly of the Seahawks, in free agency this spring. An encouraging 2017 season notwithstanding, in his four years in the league, Richardson has yet to produce on a large scale.

One of the qualms many D.C. fans had when they learned that the team traded for Alex Smith, other than the fact that he’s four years older than outgoing QB Kirk Cousins, is that Smith has often needed a stacked assortment of talented skill players around him to succeed. It’s true that Washington has had worse luck than most with injuries, which is why Jordan Reed has struggled to stay on the field and Josh Doctson essentially lost a year of development with an injury-plagued 2016 rookie campaign.

Unfortunately that rotten injury luck hasn’t attenuated with the arrival of a new season. In 2017, the'‘Skins put 23 players on IR, some of whom are still easing their way back into the lineup nearly a year later. Two weeks into training camp, and the team has already had a three-day span in which three players were placed on IR. The 'Skins have their share of deficiencies even when healthy. With this scale of injury depletion, they stand no chance.

Guice looked primed to bring stability to the backfield for Washington, something that has been missing since Alfred Morris’s emergence coincided with that of Robert Griffin III. And, while everything in the preseason must be taken with at least a granule of salt, Guice impressed in limited action. On the play the injury occurred, Guice broke off a 34-yard run.