Sam Darnold played just five snaps. A.J. Brown will be sidelined for a while. De’Zhaun Stribling was carted off the field.
High-profile injuries are adding up just two games into the NFL season. It’s not even Sunday yet.
Darnold got good news about his hip injury. Not so much for Brown. Stribling’s status wasn’t immediately known.
“It’s been positive news,” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said Thursday about Darnold. “Right now we’re just working through the extent of the injury and put a plan in place to get back rocking and rolling.”
Macdonald called it a muscle injury for Darnold near his hip and that the team would have a better idea of his status for the game against Arizona on Sept. 20 when practice resumes next week.
Drew Lock replaced Darnold and led Seattle to a 13-10 comeback win over New England in a Super Bowl rematch Wednesday night. Lock proved he’s a capable backup so the defending Super Bowl champions won’t have to rush Darnold back to face the Cardinals.
“He’s been tremendous,” Macdonald said about Lock. “He operates like a starter does in terms of preparation. The chemistry and the personality of our quarterback room is one that is very supportive of each other and also trying to bring out the best in one another. Drew provides a cool, confident, loose and focusedness to the whole equation, which you need — you need that. On top of that, since he’s got here, he’s played great football in practice and in the preseason. We saw what he could do last night. If he has to play again then we expect the same moving forward.”
The Patriots won’t have Brown for a while after the star wide receiver went down in the second half against Seattle. He has a high-ankle sprain and will miss several games, a person with knowledge of his injury told The Associated Press on Thursday night.
The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because the Patriots haven’t announced the severity of Brown’s injury, said an MRI confirmed the diagnosis. Brown could miss anywhere from three to six games, depending on the way his ankle responds to treatment.
Without Brown, New England’s offense fizzled. The Patriots went three-and-out twice and then Drake Maye threw three straight interceptions.
“I wish life was like that, where you could wait for your guys to come back and be healthy again but, it’s NFL football,” Patriots veteran receiver Mack Hollins said.
New England traded a 2028 first-round pick to Philadelphia in the deal for Brown to give Maye a top playmaker. Now, he’ll be without him for a few weeks. The Patriots have a tough schedule coming up with three games against three 2025 playoff teams. They’ll host Pittsburgh on Sept. 20, and visit Jacksonville and Buffalo.
“You’ve got to stick together and that starts with me getting back to work and having the right intention in practice,” Maye said. “These guys are here for me. I think they’ve done a great job in supporting me and have had my back. I’ve got to earn their trust. I know I have their trust, but I got to keep on putting better football out there. I think it’s Week 1 but at the same time, there’s a full season ahead but you got to get this going early. We got to start off on the right foot. I know what we had last year, but we got a new season, a new team, and we need to build that.”
Stribling, who was San Francisco’s top draft pick in April at No. 33 overall, limped off the field after running a route in the second quarter of a 27-7 victory over the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday night.
He left the game on a cart and was quickly ruled out for the game. The 49ers signed veteran Mike Evans and brought back Deebo Samuel but were counting on Stribling after losing Ricky Pearsall for the season in the summer.
Tight end Jake Tonges also didn’t return for San Francisco after injuring his knee. Rams linebacker Nate Landman got hurt late in the game.
NFL teams have to deal with injuries every week. It’s part of football. The teams with the most depth and best backups find ways to overcome key losses.
The Seahawks and Patriots have to figure it out quickly.
On Football analyzes the biggest topics in the NFL from week to week. For more On Football analysis, head here.
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San Francisco 49ers wide receiver De'zhaun Stribling (7) sits on the field after being injured in the first half of an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Doug Benc)
New England Patriots wide receiver A.J. Brown (1) is tended to on the field during the second half of an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold, center, is sacked by New England Patriots linebacker Dre'mont Jones, left, as Seattle Seahawks linebacker Connor O'Toole is at right, during the first half of an NFL football game, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
NEW YORK (AP) — Two decades after U.S. authorities locked Khalid Sheikh Mohammed away at a military detention center in Cuba, the purported mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks sometimes seems barely any closer to being put on trial than the day he arrived.
A judge recently set a 2028 date for Mohammed to finally be tried before a military tribunal, but some lawyers predict it will never happen — not that year or any other year. They say the maze of legal issues that arose because Mohammed was tortured following his 2003 capture in Pakistan is too twisted to ever be straightened out.
A fleeting bid to put him on trial in a civilian court in New York City was shouted down years ago over security concerns.
A plea agreement that would have kept Mohammed imprisoned for life, but spared him from a possible execution, began to collapse shortly after it was announced in 2024, and finally died for good last year.
“It’s all contaminated by politics and the lack of accountability on torture,” said Joshua Dratel, an attorney who played a part in assuring that Mohammed has proper legal representation.
In late August, the U.S. military judge who set a June 5, 2028, trial date for Mohammed and three others charged in the Sept. 11 attacks ruled that prosecutors could not use an alleged confession he made to the FBI in 2007. Those statements were deemed tainted because Mohammed was subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” overseas, including the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding.
While the ruling was a blow to the prosecution, the U.S. government decided not to appeal, in part because doing so could have further delayed a possible trial.
Meanwhile, Mohammed remains jailed in Guantanamo Bay, where he was brought on Sept. 5, 2006, following more than three years in secret prisons in other countries.
Terry Strada, whose husband, Tom, died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, said that she and other people who lost family members still hope a trial will someday happen.
“We very much want to see this come to an end at some point. We do want to see justice served. It’s just as important as 25 years ago,” she said.
But Strada, the national chair of the group 9/11 Families United, also said she would rather have Mohammed rot at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely than get behind a resolution that would involve dropping the death penalty as a possibility. Strada said she worries that if Mohammed is not executed, future U.S. leaders might someday be tempted to swap him for Americans held prisoner elsewhere in the world.
The death penalty, she said, “fits the crime and it would prevent that from ever happening. And that’s important to me.”
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003, accused of developing and directing the 9/11 attacks, as a leader of the Islamic militant group al-Qaida. Some of the delays in his legal proceedings have stemmed from his treatment after he fell into U.S. control. A U.S. Senate report pointed to his extended torture in CIA custody, including 183 sessions of waterboarding.
For a time in 2009, it seemed Mohammed was headed to New York after then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to try him and four other men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks in a Manhattan courthouse just blocks from the World Trade Center site.
Then-President Barack Obama, who had pledged to close the Guantanamo detention center, said Mohammed would face “the most exacting demands of justice.”
Almost immediately, opposition arose. Some critics predicted Mohammed would use a trial as a platform to spread hateful views of America and its allies. Others cited security concerns, saying it could again make New York a terrorist target. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, called the plan unwise and said it showed “a lack of concern for the rights of the public.”
Plans for a civilian trial were dropped.
“It was a charade in many respects,” Dratel said.
The military tribunal system, he said, has proven itself to be a worse solution, unable to function efficiently, without a proper structure and without fidelity to federal courts.
“Each time you reach an impasse, no one knows what to do,” he said.
David Raskin, a Washington lawyer now in private practice who would have led the government’s prosecution of Mohammed in New York if it hadn't been abandoned, said in an essay published in The Washington Post on Wednesday that he is confident a civilian trial would have ended with a conviction. The military commissions, on the other hand, “became a defense lawyer's dream,” beset by “endless litigation over their legality and procedures.”
“I predict there will never be a completed military commission trial for Mohammed and the other Sept. 11 defendants,” he said.
An American flag, flowers and an image of Maria Ramirez are left on the 9/11 Memorial, Thursday, September 10, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
People visit the 9/11 Memorial as the sun is reflected off One World Trade Center, Thursday, September 10, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
FILE - A street in New York's lower Manhattan area is littered with debris after the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center following terrorist attacks, Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Richard Drew File,)
