Prior to the Detroit Lions dropping Sunday afternoon’s contest to the Carolina Panthers, there was a bit of mystery during pre-game warmups.
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Offensive tackle Taylor Decker inexplicably left the field for a bit before returning. And while his absence could technically be described as tending to an injury, it probably wound’t be the first thing that comes to mind.
In fact, it was a lower body injury – his feet, to be specific. Thanks to his dress shoes, there were blisters on his feet.
“I mean everybody’s dealing with stuff all year,” Decker said Monday in a conference call. “I’ve got plenty of things I’m dealing with. I actually headed (to the locker room) early because my dress shoes gave me blisters and I wanted to put blister pads on. With that being said, everybody’s dealing with stuff. Everybody’s got stuff that’s nagging at them and as the season wears on you just have to manage it.
“But I know I’ve said this before, if you’re out there and you’re playing you’re expected to perform and I expect myself to perform at my best for every single snap I’m out there on the field and I expect to play every single snap of every single game no matter what.”
Of course, the ongoing situation in the world has changed up the routines of plenty of people who would normally routinely wear dress shoes to work. But for Decker, he usually sticks with boots.
“This is going to sound like a strange answer,” he said. “Even though we’ve dressed up a lot this year, I’ve just been wearing a lot of boots because they’re more comfortable and I just wore a pair of dress shoes this week. I haven’t really worn dress shoes in a long time and they were just rubbing my feet.”
“So I was trying to get them right and changed my cleats a couple times and got them figured out. But for any women in this room who have worn like high heels, like blisters can be a (major annoyance). Not fun to have but I mean it’s a blister, who cares? It sounds silly,but that’s what it was.”
Nothing wrong with being up front about it!
– – Quotes via Carlos Monnarez of The Detroit Free Press Link – –
