Patrick Robinson leaves game with knee injury suffered during commercial break

In one of the stranger injuries I can remember seeing, Colts cornerback Patrick Robinson suffered a knee injury during a commercial break late in today’s game against the Chicago Bears. As Brent Fatig pointed out on Twitter, however, Robinson did return late in the game, which is a good sign.

The Bears were in the red zone in the fourth quarter looking to score, and just as the TV came back from commercial players gathered around Robinson and trainers ran on the field, looked at him, and then walked off with him before spending a considerable amount of time with him on the sidelines. So what happened? It’s really hard to tell, but from the TV replay it looked like as he was getting ready to go back outside after huddling with his teammates there was a non-contact injury that caused him to come out of the game. The Colts later updated that it was indeed a knee injury, but beyond that we don’t really know many details. Again, though, it’s a good sign that he was able to return.

Of course, when Robinson left today’s game the Colts’ cornerback play actually improved. Rashaan Melvin did a nice job of filling in, and he actually forced a key fumble late in the game. Robinson had a really tough day in coverage, as the Bears consistently went after him and he gave up several plays. That’s the challenge of playing opposite of Vontae Davis, and Robinson clearly wasn’t up to the test today. And through the first five games, he’s had a very quiet season and hasn’t done much of value for Indianapolis. In fact, Antonio Cromartie has played much better in a Colts uniform than Patrick Robinson (remember, Cromartie was very solid in the first three games) but after a really bad game last week the Colts cut him to make a point that everyone will be held accountable for their play. Will a similar message be sent this week regarding Robinson? Very likely not. Why? Well, that’d be a question for Ryan Grigson and Chuck Pagano.

But for right now, the bigger question is about his injury situation, which indeed was one of the strangest injuries I’ve seen in a while.