The Indianapolis Colts injury news that landed hardest this week did not involve a player. Special teams coordinator Brian Mason tore multiple ligaments in his knee after a sideline collision on the final play of Thursday night's preseason game against the Patriots, per a source. Final play. Preseason. That is the kind of luck that makes you exhale through your teeth.
We do not have a surgery date or a timetable yet, and I am not going to guess at one. Multiple ligaments is a phrase that carries its own weight without me adding to it.
What happened to Colts special teams coordinator Brian Mason
The details we have are thin and specific at the same time: a collision on the sideline, on the last snap of the night, and a coordinator who came off it with a knee that will need real repair. Anyone who has stood near an NFL sideline knows how little room there actually is out there. Bodies come off the field at full speed with nowhere to decelerate, and the people in headsets are standing in the runoff.
The league did not paint that restricted buffer between the white line and the coaching box for decoration. It exists because the sideline is the most crowded, least protected real estate in the sport, and every so often the game reaches out and takes somebody who never had a snap counted for him.
Why a special teams coach's knee matters more than it sounds
Here is the part that gets underrated. Of the three coordinator chairs, special teams is the one that gets done on your feet. Offensive and defensive coordinators live in install meetings, on the headset, in the tablet. A special teams coordinator lives on the grass: walking gunners through releases, standing in the middle of a punt-protection drill, physically positioning the second-level bodies on a kickoff return, running the field-goal operation rep after rep until the timing is muscle memory.
That is a job you can absolutely do from a stool or a cart or a booth. Coaches have done it. But it is not the same job, and anyone pretending otherwise has not watched a coordinator crouch behind a return unit to see what the returner sees.
The timing is its own cruelty. Mid-August is when special teams units actually get built. The roster is still bloated, the fourth-phase depth is being sorted out of camp bodies, and the coverage teams that decide games in November get assembled in these exact weeks by the guy who now has a badly damaged knee.
What comes next for the Colts
Surgery, then a rehab that I would not put a number on until the team does. In the meantime, the practical answer is the one every staff reaches for: the assistants who work under him carry more of the on-field load, and Mason coaches from wherever his knee allows him to coach from. Staffs are deeper than fans think. They are not so deep that losing your coordinator's mobility in the middle of August costs nothing.
What I am watching is whether Indianapolis says anything about a procedure and a return, and how the special teams reps get divided in the meantime. Coaching staffs rarely announce that publicly. You find it in practice reports, in who is running the drill, in whose voice is doing the yelling.
Mostly I am watching for a good outcome for a guy who got hurt doing his job in the least glamorous way possible. Wishing him a clean surgery and a fast one.
