Apparently Al Davis was as shocked to hear this news as I was.

According to the report, McFadden injured his left shoulder against the Kansas City Chiefs in week 2 of the regular season. This was the same game that McFadden suffered the first of his turf toe injures that limited his effectives throughout his rookie year. It was also the lone 100 yard performance of his rookie season. Run-DMC danced around the Chiefs for a sizzling 164 yards in that game  and for one week made all Raider fans think we could at least brag of having a first round fantasy football draft pick on our roster.

It is hard to find a silver lining in this news since McFadden is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the franchise, but it does prove his toughness and willingness to play with pain. Being a professional athlete means going under the knife more often than sushi grade fish, so this is not as alarming as it might sound. However, insisting on seeing your own physician and not the team’s is a little troublesome.

I’m willing to look past this and trust that McFadden is just doing what’s best for his body. Hey, so long as he’s not going to that back alley surgeon that Jack Napier went to in Tim Burton’s Batman, I’m cool with it. Maybe the fact that his turf toes were constantly injected to numb the pain and never dealt with appropriately led McFadden to believe that the team doctor was just going to hand him aspirin and give his shoulder a Mr. Miyagi rub whenever he complained of pain.

This comes on top of the news that JaMarcus Russell underwent a minor procedure to have bone chips removed from his right ankle.

Great! We’re not even into mini camp yet and we’ve got two guys on the IR. Oh, by the way, they’re the two guys who we most need to be healthy (No offense Nnamdi, but you’re not under contract yet). 

At least both DMC and J-Russ had their surgeries early in the offseason instead of busting a Shaq and waiting until a week before the season starts to go under the knife.