If the season ended today, Detroit Lions wide receiver Josh Reynolds has already tied his career-high for touchdowns (five) and he's within 85 yards of his career-best for receiving yards. Oh, and he's also top-10 in the NFL in yards per catch (16.2; tied for seventh) entering Week 16.
Reynolds was also likely operating at far less than 100 percent health for a time this season, and it's worth wondering where he's at in that regard right now. From back during the bye week in early November, here's what Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press reported about a Reynolds injury.
"Detroit Lions' Josh Reynolds ranks 3rd in the NFL in yards per catch and has not missed a game despite tearing an adductor muscle off the bone."
I'm no doctor, so I have no idea how tearing an adductor muscle off the bone might or might not heal over the course of several weeks. But I do know that Reynolds has not missed a game this season, and even with a slight reduction lately (in line with Jameson Williams proving he deserves more) he's still playing over half of the offensive snaps in every game.
Josh Reynolds earns another nickname, via Lions head coach Dan Campbell
Praying mantis. Spider of Death. A Freaking Serpent. These are the nicknames Lions head coach Dan Campbell has used for Reynolds, said with great reverence of course.
On Monday, via Kory Woods of MLive, Campbell offered up a new nickname someone else came up with for Reynolds.
"Somebody referred to him as this morning—I’m not going to tell you who it was—and this was not meant as a negative, but as ‘the cockroach’ because he just won’t die,” Campbell said. “Like this guy just keeps coming back. He just won’t go away. He always bounces back. And you talk about a resilient man—he’s resilient and he’s tough."
So if not Campbell, who gave Reynolds "the coachroach" nickname? Amon-Ra St. Brown seems like a solid bet, but we'll probably never know. It's also an appropriate nickname for him, based partially on some presumptions about a significant injury he has dealt with.