Injury Update on Vontae Davis, Dwayne Allen

The Colts escaped Sunday's win over the Redskins with only one injury, though it was to the team's best defensive player.  The Colts also have several players who didn't play on Sunday who are recovering from injuries, and during his press conference on Monday afternoon Colts head coach Chuck Pagano gave an update on those players.

Firstly, cornerback Vontae Davis suffered a concussion during yesterday's game.  He's going through the NFL's concussion protocol, and right now it's really too early to tell whether or not he'll be ready to play this weekend against the Browns.  "Hopefully things calm down for him and he'll be available for the game," Pagano said, but again with the protocol and with each player responding differently and each concussion presenting a different situation, it's really too early to tell whether Davis will be out there on Sunday.  He's the third Colts' cornerback to suffer a concussion in the last few weeks, as previously Greg Toler and Loucheiz Purifoy (since waived) both suffered concussions.   Toler missed one game with the injury.  If Davis can't go this weekend, that's bad news for a Colts team that will be facing one of the league's best wide receivers in Josh Gordon.  Without one of the league's best corners, that could very well be a big mismatch to watch.  But of course, we're getting ahead of ourselves - right now, we don't know whether or not Vontae Davis will play.  What we do know is that he has a concussion and is going through the protocol.

In a bit of good injury news, Chuck Pagano said that he expects tight end Dwayne Allen to practice on Wednesday.  Pagano said that Allen is, "trending in the right direction, looks like we could have him available for practice on Wednesday, which would be great. They're going to take him out and test him and run him and move him around. So he's doing well."  Allen has missed the last two games and has not practiced since injuring his ankle in the Colts' loss to the Patriots in week eleven, an injury that was diagnosed as a sprain.  His hopeful return to practice doesn't automatically mean that he'll play this Sunday, but it'd be a great sign that he's getting close.

Furthermore, offensive lineman Hugh Thornton, who suffered an MCL sprain in week twelve and didn't practice at all last week, is still "week-to-week," Pagano said.  For the Colts, that term often means that the player will miss some time, and so it seems very possible that Thornton won't be ready this Sunday.  In his place last week, Joe Reitz started at right guard and actually seemed to be an upgrade, so I don't think it's a huge hurry to get Thornton back healthy.

The Colts will return to the practice field on Wednesday (after the customary off day Tuesday) and we should have more updates then on the injury situation.