The best moment of Clinton Portis's weekly appearance on today's John Thompson Show? When the Coach asked CP for his thoughts on the election, and the back responded with "my President is black, my Lambo's blue."
But you don't care about that, you care about Portis's knee injury, which he described as a second-degree MCL sprain. The good news? "I had 15 injuries two weeks ago," Portis said. "Now I've only got one."
The bad news? "Right now I can't straighten it out," he said of his left leg. "I just started bending it today. So hopefully by the end of the week. We've got five days, so hopefully I'll be ready."
He said the knee got tweaked twice against the Steelers, once on a hit early in the game and the second time on a pileup at the end of the game. He said he thought both he and backup Ladell Betts would wind up being game-time decisions on Sunday, and that he wouldn't play if he thought he couldn't be effective.
"You know, I'd love to be out there, but if I can't go out there and give the team what they need, I don't want to hurt the team," he said. "I want to help the team, so I'm doing everything that I can TO play....I think if I wouldn't have got hit on the knee I would have been great. The rest of my body healed, but I think that sustaining that injury Monday night was a setback. I mean, it didn't seem as bad Tuesday when we went and checked with the doctor. So it was just soreness in the knee, so we figured rest would help, but as the week went on it got worse."
He said the pain increased on Thursday night and Friday, leading to another examination and the sprain diagnosis. He said he thought he could help the team even if he wasn't the main focal point of the offense merely by being on the field and forcing the Cowboys to account for him, but he also said he wouldn't put himself out there just for the sake of being out there.
"I mean, I'm not gonna play if I can't be myself," he said. "You know, when it comes to playing, I never want to put something on the field that's not me. I don't want to sit in a press conference after the game and say, 'Oh, I knew I couldn't do this, I knew I couldn't do that.' If my knee feels good at the start of the game, I'm gonna play. If it don't, if something happens during the game and I have a setback, then I'll have to deal with that at that time. But going into the game if my knee feels good enough to play, then I'm gonna play."
The two-to-four week absence mentioned by some ESPN980 employees earlier in the day was never mentioned.
