B14 | REPORTONBUSINESS O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| WEDNESDAY,NOVEMBER6,2019
Jaguars coach Doug Marrone be-
lieves quarterback Nick Foles
gives the team “a better chance
of winning right now.”
Marrone announced Tuesday
he will start Foles over rookie
sensation Gardner Minshew “go-
ing forward.”
He made the decision during
the team’s bye week, saying Foles
is ready to return from a broken
left collarbone and will start next
week at Indianapolis.
“For me, it was looking back at
all the work we put in,” Marrone
said.
“I just go back to the experi-
ence and what he’s going to be
able to do.
“I think that’s going to give us
the ability, a better chance of
winning right now.”
Marrone told both players be-
fore a team meeting.
Players were not available to
the media afterward.
Marrone said Minshew took
the news like “a competitor.”
“When I say someone’s a com-
petitor and they hear something
like that, I think everyone can
figure that out,” Marrone said.
Foles was injured while throw-
ing a 35-yard touchdown pass to
DJ Chark on the second series of
the team’s season opener.
Minshew replaced him and
went 4-4 as the starter, throwing
for 2,285 yards, with 13 touch-
downs and four interceptions. He
also ran for 235 yards but has lost
seven of an NFL-leading 11 fum-
bles.
“What he’s done, he’s done a
great job,” Marrone said.
“I feel a whole different about
him now than I did prior to him
playing, in a very positive way.
We took some things and had
some discussions on things that
we’re going to work on going for-
ward, which will give him the
ability to be a player in this
league for a long time. I really be-
lieve that.”
Minshew was a sixth-round
draft pick from Washington State
and became a fan favourite by
giving the Jaguars a chance in
nearly every game.
His 1970s look – he rocks a
groovy headband, an unkempt
mustache, jean shorts and
throwback T-shirts – is as much a
part of his engaging persona as
stories that range from pregame
stretching while wearing only a
jock strap to trying to break his
hand during college in hopes of
earning an extra year of eligibil-
ity.
But most everyone expected
the Jaguars to go back to Foles, a
former Super Bowl MVP who
signed a four-year, US$88-million
contract to leave Philadelphia in
March.
Minshew looked more like a
rookie than a savvy vet in three
of Jacksonville’s past four games.
He was jittery in the pocket and
mostly inept in the red zone.
He led the Jags to a mere field
goal in a 26-3 drubbing by Hous-
ton in London on Sunday. He
threw for 309 yards, most of
them in garbage time.
The other numbers were more
telling: 27 of 47. Two intercep-
tions. Two lost fumbles. A num-
ber of off-target throws. Passer
rating of 59.6, his second-lowest
of the season.
Marrone said he tried to ig-
nore Minshew’s performance
across the pond while making
his choice.
“I tried to take that out and
put it as a body of work, and
that’s what I did,” Marrone said.
“I think that’s important. I
think emotions can run some-
times differently, so I looked at
the body of work.”
Jacksonville waived another
former Super Bowl MVP, former
Seattle linebacker Malcolm
Smith, to make room for Foles on
the 53-man roster.
Foles, who led the Eagles to
four playoff victories over the
past two seasons, returned to
practice two weeks ago and was
officially activated from injured
reserve Tuesday.
“We’ve progressively brought
him back into drills and brought
him into some high-speed, close-
quarter rushing, where guys were
coming at him, blitzes where
people were coming free,” Mar-
rone said.
“We felt like we did the best
job to make sure that he was in
position to be ready once he was
healthy.”THE ASSOCIATED PRESSFoleswill
startatQB
forJaguars
overMinshew
afterbyeweek
MARKLONGJACKSONVILLE,FLA.B
etween the titanium plates and the
13 screws assembled in a mish-
mash array of angles, his X-ray
looks like a pile of pickup sticks.
It’s almost a year ago to the day that
Manuel Osborne-Paradis crashed at Lake
Louise, Alta., in his first training run for his
opening race of the World Cup ski season.
Emotions were already frayed that week
in the sport’s tight-knit community. Cana-
dian teammate Broderick Thompson had
suffered a season-ending knee injury days
earlier at nearby Nakiska. It was the one-
year anniversary of the death of French
skier David Poisson on the same Alberta
hill.
“So it was kind of a tough time ... the
thoughts were there,” Osborne-Paradis
said.
Physically, the 35-year-old from North
Vancouver, B.C., was feeling great. His
equipment was responding well. But half-
way down his run, Osborne-Paradis made
a “silly mistake, a lackadaisical turn where
I wasn’t over the outside ski like I should
have been.”
He hit some soft snow, and went sailing
head over heels into the safety nets, shat-
tering his tibia and fibula so thoroughly
there was concern he might lose his leg.
Certainly few people thought he’d ever ski
again.
“I hadn’t even stopped falling and I was
thinking, ‘Uh-oh, this is broken,’ ” Os-
borne-Paradis said.
He hadn’t talked publicly much about
that horrible day. His future had been so
uncertain. But he is mounting a return,
hoping to cap his career at the 2022 Beijing
Olympics in what would be a remarkable
comeback story.
Recounting that day, the skier said med-
ical personnel were quick to reach the
mangled 11-time World Cup medalist. One
of them popped a fentanyl lollipop in his
mouth for the pain. They rolled him on his
side – his leg too crushed to transport him
on his back – and airlifted him off the
mountain to a Calgary hospital.
Canadian veteran Erik Guay was at the
top of the hill readying for his run, and
heard his teammate’s screams over the
coaches’ radios. Guay announced his re-
tirement later that week.
“We were all under a lot of pressure at
that time, and it would be tough when you
have teammates falling every week and
hurting themselves,” Osborne-Paradis
said. “As real as it is in our sport that in-
juries are bound to happen, and it’s more
of a when not if, when they start happen-
ing every week, it’s too close to reality.”
Sitting in a posh hotel Tuesday in down-
town Toronto where Alpine Canada was
celebrating its 100th anniversary the next
day, Osborne-Paradis scrolled through his
phone. There were photos from his hospi-
tal bed with his wife, Lana. There were pho-
tos of the deep gash in his leg that had to be
reopened several times to relieve compart-
ment syndrome. And there’s the X-ray of
his shattered tibia and fib-
ula. (Google “gruesome
broken leg X-rays” and the
Canadian skier’s would be
among the worst).
His tibial fracture as a 5
out of 6 on the Schatzker
scale of severity. A 6 usually
occurs in a fatality, Os-
borne-Paradis said – such
as when the engine block of
a car is driven up through
the leg.
He had two major surgeries and seven
minor ones over 12 days. His bones are
patched together by plates, 13 screws and
bone cement. Doctors couldn’t save the
tibia, replacing it with a cadaver’s hip bone.
His case has become well known among
Calgary’s medical community.
“I was walking around the golf course
the other day and this woman was walking
her dog, and said ‘Are you Manny? I’m a
doctor in Calgary, I’ve heard about your
leg, and oh my God, it was nasty,’ ” he said.
It wasn’t a stretch that Osborne-Paradis
was told he’d never ski again.
“Yeah, with that attitude you’re never
going to ski again,” he said. “But the only
reason I’ve stood on the podium or won
races is because you’re defying odds. If you
just looked at the odds, nobody would ever
join sports, and so I feel like this is just an-
other bump in the road.“My team and my sponsors and myself,
we all had a goal of making it to the next
Olympics, and at this point, there’s just no
counting that out. There’s a process in
place to get back. It’s possible. I was skiing
at a high level, and if I can get back to 95 per
cent or 100 per cent, there’s no doubt in my
mind and my team’s mind that I can stand
on the podium again.”
There have certainly been setbacks in
his recovery. He pushed it too hard in the
gym during his rehabilitation, breaking all
but four of the screws. Doctors opted
against another surgery, so there those
screws remain. It knocked him back in his
recovery more than two months.
He still hasn’t been cleared to ski, but
predicts he’ll be back on the snow some-
time this winter. He plans to race again
next season.
He knows there’ll be fear
when he’s crouched in the
start hut for that first run
when he returns. But fear is a
big part of any ski racer’s ca-
reer.
“You’re always prepared to
be injured with skiing,” Os-
borne-Paradis said. “You learn
to conquer those demons and
every race there’s something
that scares you. That’s what
the training is for ... it’s nor-
malizing the extremes that we do.”
Along with his rehab, the world cham-
pionship bronze medalist is completing a
sport management program at Harvard.
His daughter, Sloane, turns 3 later this
month, and Lana, a personal trainer who
has a women’s health online group –
http://www.blastfitness.ca – is pregnant with
their second child.
If his comeback is derailed, Osborne-
Paradis said he’ll leave the sport fulfilled,
all of his childhood dreams reached.
“I’m not out there to prove that I need to
be better, I think that I’ve achieved this
high level of skiing and this amazing career
that I’ve been humbled to experience
that’s just through sheer hard work, deter-
mination and mental tenacity, and this is
just another battle to deal with.”THE CANADIAN PRESSAftersufferingasevereleginjurylastyear,skierManuelOsborne-Paradis,seeninTorontoonTuesday,ishopingtocaphiscareeratthe
2022Olympics.Whilehehasn’tbeenclearedtoski,hepredictshe’llbebackonthesnowthiswinter.NATHAN DENETTE/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Osborne-Paradisreadyfora
comebackaftergruesomeinjury
LORIEWINGTORONTO
He had two major
surgeries and seven
minor ones over 12
days. His bones are
patched together by
plates, 13 screws
and bone cement.Carolina quarterback Cam Newton
sprained his left foot in the Panthers’ third
preseason game but hid just how much it
bothered him.
Newton did not play well in two regular-
season games, and after weeks of hoping
and waiting, he will not play again in this
regular season. The Panthers placed him
on injured reserve Tuesday, a move that al-
lows him to continue rehabilitating at his
own pace, but could also spell the begin-
ning of the end to his marvelous tenure in
Carolina.
“For the past seven weeks, Cam has dili-
gently followed a program of rest and re-
hab and still is experiencing pain in his
foot,” general manager Marty Hurney said
in a statement. “He saw two foot special-
ists last week who agreed that he should
continue that path prescribed by the
team’s medical staff, and that it likely will
take significant time for the injury to fully
heal. We have said all along that it is im-
possible to put a timetable on this injury.
Nobody is more frustrated with that fact
than Cam.”
Newton started in Week 1 against the
Los Angeles Rams but, with his mobility
compromised, played almost exclusively
from the pocket. He started the next week,
against Tampa Bay, but was unable to run
or anchor his foot to throw with confi-
dence and precision.
Since then, coach Ron Rivera had grown
weary of answering questions about New-
ton’s availability, even stopping a Septem-
ber news conference after repeated
queries. Newton has not commented pub-
licly about his status since releasing a You-
Tube video on Sept. 27, about two weeks
after he aggravated his injury against Tam-
pa Bay. In that video, he acknowledged
that he was dealing with a “mild Lisfranc”
injury; the Lisfranc ligament is a band of
tissue that connects the front of his foot to
the mid-foot and is critical in preserving
the alignment of the foot.
“If I were to go out there and play four
quarters of football in the state that I’m in
right now with my foot, it would be a No. 1
out there but it won’t be Cam Newton,
what everybody’s accustomed to seeing,
and I refuse for that to happen,” Newton
said in the video. “Because I’ve been doing
that for two games. And I said, that’s not
acceptable. It’s hard for me to watch film,
it’s hard for me to go about my everyday
life knowing that I’m being held back by
an ailment that all I have to do is just do
right by.”
Newton, the winner of the league’s Most
Valuable Player Award in 2015, is, when
healthy, among the league’s most dynamicplayers, a fearsome runner and a lethal
passer who holds franchise marks in yar-
dage and touchdowns. But persistent
shoulder problems caused him to miss the
final two games last season, necessitating
off-season surgery, and his foot discomfort
sapped his potency.
Against the Rams, he rushed for minus
two yards, the fewest of his career. Against
Tampa Bay, he completed 49 per cent of
his passes and, in the ultimate indication
of his running limitations, was used as a
decoy on fourth-and-1 from the Bucca-
neers’ two-yard line late in the fourth
quarter. Across those two games, both
losses, Newton completed 56.2 per cent of
his passes and averaged the fewest yards
per attempt, 6.4, of his career.
Newton has one more year left on the
contract extension he signed in June, 2015,
but Carolina will have to determine how to
assess his recent injury issues as they plan
for next season. The Panthers could save
US$19-million by releasing him, according
to OvertheCap.com, and incur only US$2-
million in dead money.
In Newton’s absence, backup Kyle Allen
has steadied the Panthers, leading them to
five wins in their past six games. At 5-3,
they are tied with the Rams for seventh in
the NFC, a half-game out of a playoff spot.NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICENewtontomissrestofregularseason
BENSHPIGEL