Today, the Washington Football team placed wide receiver Curtis Samuel on short-term IR due to a lingering groin injury.

This roster move will shelve the former Carolina Panther for at least three weeks. Meaning, the earliest Samuel can play is week four against the Atlanta Falcons.

Although disappointing, this designation isn't much of a surprise if you have been following the situation closely. The former Ohio State star has been struggling to find the field in his time with the burgundy and gold.

In June, Washington conducted it's annual mini-camp in which rookies, free agents and returning players congregated for the first time this season. Samuel was a notable absence in this affair, and the early message was that the receiver was simply being held out for precautionary reasons and the ability to rest.

Fast forward three months later, and Samuel has yet to string together consecutive practices in which he takes the field with his teammates. It's now an area of concern.

When asked why Washington decided to place Samuel on injured reserve, Coach Ron Rivera stated, "We're just trying to take a little bit of pressure off him in terms of his rehab program. Having been put on the COVID list at one time I think set him back in terms of his opportunity to rehab and get himself ready to go for the year. We want to create this opportunity to take advantage of it and really just let him focus on getting healthy before he has to start worrying about playing."

As shared above, in addition to Samuel having a lingering soft-tissue injury, the COVID-19 virus has hampered the rehabilitation of the wide receiver. This has limited Samuel to individual drills and stretching over the past few months.

Samuel has been pushing for a week one debut, and has amped up his activity over the past few weeks. However, something went awry Wednesday in practice, as seen in this video below.

At this point surgery doesn't seem like an option. When asked about the possibility of a procedure, Rivera seemed irritated and dismissed the notion quickly, "Don't even bring that up. Okay. Somebody else brought that up. I don't want to start any rumors, any crap. Okay. So this has got nothing to do with any of that. It's just about giving a guy an opportunity to get a chance to rehab the way he needed to, because unfortunately when we had to put them on COVID he missed basically two weeks."

Luckily for Washington, they have learned to live without Samuel over the better part of this offseason. And this year has provided ample depth for what was once a depleted WR corps.

When asked if the loss of Samuel was a serious detriment to the team, Rivera seemed confident in his options at receiver. "No, we have enough guys that can do what Curtis does and we feel good about those guys", Rivera said. "That's why we don't feel any pressure as far as doing what we're doing."

Washington will take on the Los Angeles Chargers this Sunday at 1pm. However, Samuel will be out of the lineup and will likely be replaced by Cam Sims or rookie Dyami Brown.

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