For most of us, preseason football is the chips and salsa of the football season, an appetizer designed to fire up the taste buds without a whole lot of nutritional value. Football in early August is for the sickos, the hardcores who grind tape while everyone else is wrapping up their summer vacations. Therealstuff won't come around for a few weeks yet. For the players, though, preseason football is all too real. And for an unlucky few, preseason football is devastating, ending years and even careers before most of the country realizes you're playing. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] Just weeks after signing a massive extension,Chargers tackle Rashawn Slater suffered a torn patellar tendon in practice—freaking practice— on Thursday, ending his season without a single live snap. Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson Sr., who appears to have bones made of spun sugar,left Thursday night's preseason game against Baltimore clutching his armafter taking a sack. Most brutally, Ravens rookie cornerback Bilhal Kone was carted off the field Thursday night in an air cast, victim of season-ending torn ligaments. Injuries are part of the game, part of what you expect when you strap on pads and a helmet and go into battle against other elite physical specimens. (Pretty much everyone who read that spun-sugar sentence above — and especially the clown who wrote it — would be crippled for life after just one full-speed hit from an NFL linebacker.) Still, there's something particularly cruel about a don't-show-the-replay injury suffered before the season even begins. Empathy isn't a particularly valued commodity these days, especially not on a football field. Exhibiting empathy comes perilously close to caring about the welfare of others. And in the next man-up world of football, caring too much can mean the next man up is coming foryou. Even so, spare a thought for the injured players whose names you won't hear the rest of the season and — depending on how rosters and drafts proceed — might not ever hear again. It's a tough way to end a lifelong journey. Richardson, as it turns out, only dislocated his pinky finger and will be taking snaps very soon. Slater has $92 million of his $114 million contract extension guaranteed, so at least he's financially cushioned against the long-term ramifications of the injury. But Kone … man, he's the one you feel for, the latest example of a lifelong journey halted just short of the summit. A sixth-round selection out of Western Michigan, Kone had been projected as a contributor to the Ravens' secondary. But he landed awkwardly after breaking up a would-be Daniel Jones touchdown pass, and the Ravens medical team could tell immediately that the prognosis was as grim as it gets. "Even seeing him in the locker room just now is really hard. Very hard," Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said of Kone following the game. "But I told him, 'The sun will come up tomorrow, you'll get this taken care of. You'll be rehabbing, you're part of our team and you'll be back. So it's just not on the time that you hope for.'" It's a nice sentiment. And in the moment, Harbaugh might even believe it. But the vicious truth of the NFL is that a lost season is more than just a lost opportunity, it's a measurable percentage of a career vaporized. And for a rookie like Kone competing for a roster spot, an injury like this is worse than going back to square one, because there's a whole new crop of players currently in their final year of college who will also be fighting for that spot come 2026. Short of turning preseason football into walking-speed two-hand touch, there's no real way to prevent injuries like this. Player safety is a paramount concern — teams have systematically filed the rough edges off practice in recent decades — but there's only so much that can be done while still respecting the game's inherently violent qualities. Football is a physically crushing game, and taking preseason hits ensures you're ready for the in-season ones. The old line about football players' health is that there's a 100 percent injury rate. You play long enough, you're going to get injured, one way or another. You just have to hope that it's not serious … and that it doesn't come in the first minutes of your career.