The biggest story of the first quarter of the early games is two bad-looking injuries to two of the most talented players in the Big Ten.
Within minutes of each other, Michigan running back Fitzgerald Toussaint and Penn State linebacker Michael Mauti were both carted off the field. Toussaint was tackled on a run wide to the right against Iowa and his left leg buckled in a really and awful ugly way as he was being brought down. Mauti's knee bent the wrong way when he was being blocked by Indiana, as shown by the Mocksession.com photo shown above (Mauti is No. 42).
Both injuries are awful, and Toussaint's was particularly brutal. SBNation.com grabbed a freeze-frame picture from the television broadcast, and there's a YouTube video of the play, and we warn you before you scroll down and look, it is very graphic and not for the faint of heart.
Toussaint had 1,041 rushing yards last season, although he had just 483 yards this season coming into this week's game. ESPN's broadcast showed that Toussaint was being taken to the hospital almost immediately after he was carted off the field. His leg was put in a temporary cast right away before he was carted off.
He is a junior so he can come back for another season, but this looks like the type of injury that will take some serious rehabilitation:
Mauti is a different story, as a senior who had just two games left in his college career and seemed like a good bet to be selected pretty high in April's NFL Draft. His injury is hopefully not as serious as it appears on first glance. If it requires significant rehabilitation, that could keep him from participating in the NFL scouting combine and could affect his draft status, which would be a shame for a great and passionate player like Mauti.
We never like to see injuries, and unfortunately that's the most newsworthy thing from the first hour of games this Saturday.
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H/T to Mocksession.com
H/T to SBNation.com
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