McCargo Breaks Foot, Having Surgery Monday
by Chris Brown, Lead Journalist Last Updated: 10/9/2006 2:26 PM ET
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The Bills were badly bit by the injury bug Sunday when rookie defensive tackle John McCargo left Sunday's game with a foot injury. He left the stadium on crutches.
The news only got worse Monday when head coach Dick Jauron revealed that McCargo broke his foot and is having surgery today.
"It's a disappointment to us obviously to get him hurt now," said Jauron. "We're optimistic that the surgery will rectify the problem, but there will be a recovery time. We'll just have to see how severe it is and how long it is going to be."
Surgery will place a screw in McCargo's foot to act as a bridge between the break to facilitate faster healing.
McCargo suffered the injury in the fourth quarter on the Bears final touchdown play with 4:39 left in the game. His left foot was stepped on by another player as he was turning and shifting his weight on the foot which is what broke the bone. He came out of the game before the extra point was kicked.
The rookie defensive tackle suffered a stress fracture in that same left foot last fall which forced him to miss two months of what would be his final college season at N.C. State, but this injury is considered a routine break.
With McCargo out indefinitely the Bills defensive tackle rotation is reduced from four to three, and Jauron admits it will affect the substitution pattern on Sundays.
"It'll definitely affect it," said Jauron. "He was just starting to work into the rotation in terms of a number of plays."
Ultimately however, Jauron doesn't see it as a major issue having operated with a three man rotation earlier this fall.
"We did that in the early part of the season because John wasn't really in the rotation for any significant number of snaps until the third or fourth game," Jauron said.
The players also don't appear overly concerned about the rotation going from four to three.
"I'm not sure how it will work out," said fellow rookie Kyle Williams. "It'll probably be a lot more rolling in and out with his injury. That's for the coaches to figure out."
"We've got Larry who plays quite a bit of the time," said defensive end Chris Kelsay. "And we have Tim (Anderson) and Kyle Williams so their rotation will probably be a lot like what the defensive ends are doing. It'll probably be a three man rotation rather than just a four man rotation where they can sub two guys at a time inside."
At the same time Kelsay didn't deny that it's a loss that doesn't help their cause.
"It's a tough loss," Kelsay said. "Anytime you lose somebody you hate to see it happen, but we have to move forward. We can't dwell on it. There's nothing we can do about it, he broke his foot. We've got to keep pushing forward, and hopefully he gets better and it's not something that affects him down the road."
