Latest Brock Bowers injury update has Raiders fans starting to panic

We're in a weird time of the NFL preseason. Now that teams only play three games, this final week has morphed into the one where only the backups' backups play. Starters aren't even suiting up for this weekend's games, and it makes injury reports all the more confusing. Outside of a handful of guys who are truly on the bubble, any slightly-hurting player is almost certainly going to sit this weekend out. I'm only saying this now because for the rest of this blog, we're going to PANIC.

Brock Bowers is still hurt. Or maybe the Raiders are being precautious with him. But given the latest update on his status, things are starting to feel a little spooky. It comes from Tashan Reed, The Athletic's Senior Writer and Raiders reporter:

I'm not panicking about Brock Bowers, you're panicking about Brock Bowers

Again – given where we are on the calendar, holding him out probably isn't a reason to panic. But him not practicing for over a week now kinda is? It's entirely possible that they've seen enough of Bowers in the preseason to give him 2-3 weeks to get healthy before the season starts. That's not how Raiders fans see it, but it's possible!

For what it's worth, Antonio Pierce told reporters this week during his daily press conference that every decision they were making about Bowers was precautionary, and like Jackson Powers-Johnson, they were playing it safe before Week's 1 Chargers game.

So all's well that ends well. And yeah sure, this hasn't ended yet, but I'm just going to pretend it has! Because it's the third week of the preseason and nothing matters! Bowers is going to be back for Week 1 and put up huge numbers and we'll remember why it was smart to sit him for three weeks and wonder what the point of preseason really is. Foot injuries historically don't linger at all so there's nothing to worry about.