The injury conversation gets tiring, for fans, for players. Teams have to overcome in the NFL. But there was Garrett Williams, helmeted head in his hands after falling with a non-contact Achilles injury Sunday in a loss to the Falcons, waiting for the cart to come take him away. There was Walter Nolen III clearly emotional on the field – even though his helmet was on, and I was watching through binoculars from way up on the press box – after a non-contact knee injury waiting for the cart to take him away.

The losses on the scoreboard are difficult. The losses of teammates and friends are too.

“You try to tell yourself, ‘Next man up,'” veteran Calais Campbell said, “but you’re losing friends and losing guys you depend on and go to war with and have confidence with. There are a lot of new faces. That’s on a weekly basis, it seems like.”

The cart has been used way more than the Cardinals, or any team, would want this season. James Conner. Tip Reiman. Travis Vokolek. Andre Baccellia. And now Williams and Nolen. But what resonates about Sunday is what it means beyond 2025. If Williams tore his Achilles, that’s a long-term injury. We don’t know exactly what is wrong with Nolen, but he feared something with his reaction.

For a team already trying to make it through a tough season, those things make it tougher.

“It’s kind of scary,” rookie cornerback Denzel Burke said. “It’s the first time in my career to see so many guys get hurt like that in one game. You just gotta pray for them. Football is a tough game.”

— Michael Wilson, as is his personality, was wearing the loss after the game, upset at not only the score but also his role in the final interception, thinking he should have prevented it. So asking about his amazing 32-yard touchdown catch back in the first quarter wasn’t something he was about to giddily recall.

But it was an amazing play, somehow not letting the ball hit the ground while he battled Falcons defender Cobe Bryant.

“I think that was just, I’m not going to say lucky, but just a once-in-a, funky, wonky catch that happens once a season where, honestly you just get lucky and the ball didn’t hit the ground,” Wilson said. “I think it hit off his arm. I thought it was incomplete.”

Quarterback Jacoby Brissett didn’t think Wilson caught it, but he did think there should’ve been a pass interference flag. “I looked at the Jumbotron and saw how he caught it, and I don’t think he realized he caught it until he looked up too. Great play by him.”

— Wilson’s TD came about only after a challenge flag that was thrown by coach Jonathan Gannon. Amazingly, it was the first challenge of the season by Gannon, who had only four challenges last season.

— Wilson took the blame for the final Brissett interception, and clearly was feeling it in the locker room after the game. It looked like Wilson might’ve been able to at least get in the way of cornerback C.J. Henderson when he dove for the pick.

“It was a bad play by me,” Wilson said. “I felt like I just misjudged the ball. I didn’t realize how close the defender was to me. Just a play I wish I had back.”