“I got a little scared for Trent. I was like man, I hope he’s ok,” Derek Carr said of his right tackle, Trent Brown ahead of Sunday’s game in Cleveland.
It was just two days before that Brown was cleared from COVID-19 so he could return to practice. He was all set to play and suddenly was so ill he was placed on the inactive list.
“We were expecting Trent to play today,” said head coach Jon Gruden. “He had a great practice on Friday.”
The team is saying the symptoms are not related to COVID-19, but it’s really impossible to know for sure that his illness has nothing to do with having had COVID. Gruden on Friday reminded everyone of the seriousness of the illness and was non-committal at that time of whether Brown would be ready to go. Even though by the time Sunday rolled around, he had become confident Brown would play. Until he wasn’t.
No one really knew what was going on, making for a lot of worried teammates.
“We had no clue what was happening. All of a sudden we come in and they’re wheeling him out and I’m like Bro, what is going on?” said Derek Carr. “It was crazy. We prayed. As a team we prayed for him and we made sure he was ok, his family, because I’m sure they were scared to death.”
According to team doctors, Brown is expected to be ok. Though at pregame, the team didn’t know that. And they had a game to play.
“That’s one of my closest friends,” said Johnathan Abram, who missed the previous week’s game because he had contact with Brown after he had tested positive for COVID-19. “We talked about it pre-game, we’re going to go out there and we going to get this W for him today.”
The team did go out and get the W, whether for Brown or for themselves.
Sam Young stepped in for Brown and then Young left with an injury and was replaced by Brandon Parker, who wasn’t even supposed to play in this game.
“When Brandon Parker woke up today he was inactive,” said Gruden. “He was not going to be active. Trent Brown was the right tackle, Sam Young was the swing tackle, and Brandon Parker was eating breakfast thinking he was inactive. And then wouldn’t you know he’s pressed into service early in the game. We’re fortunate to have him and you’ve got to give Tom Cable and the offensive line a ton of credit. What they’ve been through the last two weeks has been incomprehensible. But I think football people understand what we’ve been through up front the last couple ball games. It’s bizarre.”
Brown has played just one full game this season. By next week, he will have missed the past month after having missed the first month of the season with a calf injury. His three snaps on the first possession of the season opener was the only time this season the Raiders have had their full starting offensive line on the field at the same time. Bizarre is right.