Commanders suffer new injury to another key player in training camp, but it opens the door for former second-rounder to make noise
The Commanders have avoided injury for the most part during training camp, but the latest one will keep an important player out of training camp for a bit.
The Washington Commanders have won the injury war so far during training camp, but they did lose a battle, recently.
Dan Quinn told reporters ahead of Saturday’s practice that veteran tight end John Bates will miss a couple of weeks after straining his hamstring on Day 2. Bates is the second veteran on offense to go down after Nick Allegretti got hurt during the first practice.
The Commanders remained indoors on Friday and media wasn’t allowed in the building. That’s why we’re just now receiving the update on Bates.
“John Bates strained his hamstring in Thursday practice, so that’ll knock him out for a couple weeks,” said Quinn.
It’s not world-ending news, by any means, but it’s lowkey important. That’s because Bates is easily the Commanders’ best blocking tight end and his injury will not only limit the amount of reps he needs in training camp to find his footing in David Blough’s offense, but the expectation is the offense will deploy more 12 personnel sets in 2026.
In other words: Bates is set to play a very important role in this offense.
Regardless, this opens the door for Ben Sinnott, the former second-round pick out of Kansas State. Sinnott is a very talented, versatile player who still has a lot of potential despite his lack of production over the first two years of his career.
In fact, a lot of people are excited for Sinnott, because of assumption he’ll get a lot more opportunities now that Blough is running the show on offense.
Well, opportunity received. It’ll certainly be worth monitoring what Sinnott can do in camp.
Other Commanders injury updates ahead of Saturday’s training camp practice
Quinn also updated the statuses of wide receiver Treylon Burks and center Nick Allegretti before the Commanders hit the practice field.
Burks returned to practice Saturday after missing Thursday with a sore foot. That’s good news for the former 18th overall pick, as his career hasn’t been kind to him health-wise. We’ll see if he can build off what reports said was a productive practice on Wednesday.
Allegretti is on the same timeline as Bates, per Quinn. He’s currently week-to-week and the Commanders aren’t considering bringing in outside help, which makes sense considering they still have viable options in rookie Matt Gulbin and Julian Good-Jones, for now.
“Nick won’t be out [there] today,” said Quinn. “He’s like the same thing (as Bates). He’s, you know, in the next week or so in that space.”
If a team is going to go through injuries in camp, this is kind of as good as it gets. Your important veterans will come back in a relatively short amount of time and the younger/depth guys get more reps against better competition in the meantime.
“It does give you a window to see where people are at, and so the same thing with John at tight end,” said Quinn. “Like I know John’s a warrior; he’ll be back, but it does give some spaces for people in those windows. … “(It’s like) okay, more reps. Somebody came alive. This happened, and so I like that, to see, who is here and elevate them and see what that looks like.”
We’ll be sure to provide more updates on these guys, as well as any others, once they come in.