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Josh Doctson may be the most scrutinized player currently on the Washington Redskins roster. The reason is his health that many are skeptical about in large due to him missing much of his rookie season in 2016 with a mysterious Achilles injury. He’s had run-ins with nagging issues since. In 2017, he missed much of training camp and struggled the first month of the season with a hamstring injury. Before this year’s training camp, he had an MRI on his Achilles, and while results reportedly came back clean, that did not halt the skeptical Redskins faithful.
Then on Wednesday, Doctson suffered a sprained AC joint and bruise after coming down on his shoulder during a play in practice. Doctson himself tweeted “I’m good” shortly after being evaluated. While the third-year wide receiver may have dodged a bullet with that, now comes another concerning matter presented with his health courtesy of NBC Sports Washington’s Brian Mitchell, revealing Doctson got his heel drained earlier this week.
Getting joints drained is common practice in football and sports, but it’s more eye-opening to a player that has questionable health. Doctson’s run-ins already have faithful on edge, adding any type of medical matter or procedure will sound the alarms.
As training camp continues, eyes will be glaring on Doctson with his reported bruised shoulder and now drained heel. He is expected to be a major contributor in the passing game along with Paul Richardson and Jamison Crowder. Whether fair or not, it appears the perception of Doctson is “injury prone” and the only way to shake that negative notion is him avoiding health run-ins and increasing his production beyond the 35 catches he had last year.
