It’s always painful to see an athlete suffer a torn ACL; for all of the advancements in treatment and rehab, it’s still a months-long recovery, and has a tremendous impact on a player’s season.

For some reason, it always feels worse when it’s a rookie, and their career gets put on pause before it even gets rolling.

That’s what Washington’s Derrius Guice is dealing with now.

Injury worse than first believed

Guice suffered a knee injury in Washington’s preseason opener in New England on Thursday night, after picking up 34 yards on a carry late in the first quarter.

All initial signs pointed to it being no big deal; the team tweeted in-game that he was being evaluated for a knee injury, though after the game coach Jay Gruden said Guice and tight end Manasseh Garner would get MRIs in the morning.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweeted late Friday morning that the diagnosis for Guice was a sprained MCL, but that was apparently before the MRI.

A few hours later, Washington announced that both Guice and Garner, who has been trying to latch on with a team since being signed as an undrafted rookie in 2015, both had suffered a torn ACL.

Rumors dogged Guice

Guice is likely upset, but at least publicly he handled the news as best he could. He posted a simple tweet: “God never makes mistakes,” shortly after news of his injury spread.

Considered a first-round talent by many observers after his career at LSU, Guice fell to the end of the second round. Rumors, many of them nebulous, dogged him, and Guice insisted they came out of nowhere – that he’d argued with Eagles general manager Howie Roseman and assistant head coach Duce Staley during a visit there; that he was “immature,” that he played video games too much.

(About that last one: Guice has said he played a ton growing up because it kept him off the street in Baton Rouge, where his father was gunned down and killed; and now, playing the uber-popular “Fortnite,” Guice plays with fans who donate money to charity.)

During the draft, NFL Network’s Mike Mayock said there was an “investigation” that could be “highly embarrassing” to both Guice and the team that drafted him. If there was ever such an investigation, its results have yet to be made public.

Instead, those who know Guice best speak of his infectious personality and kind spirit.

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