Bengals QB Joe Burrow confirms he defied expectations with recovery from turf toe injury
Joe Burrow pushed himself to return fast for the Bengals.
Joe Burrow is back as the starting quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals a lot sooner than everyone expected.
Burrow is just over two months removed from surgery that repaired his turf toe injury. Reports originally stated he suffered Grade 3 turf toe, which typically entails a recovery time of at least three months. This set the stage for Burrow to potentially return in the middle of December at the earliest.
And yet, he’s about to start a game on Thanksgiving night. How did he get here? Was his injury that bad? It turns out, he really did beat the odds.
Joe Burrow reveals he recovered quicker than initial recovery timeline
Burrow confirmed to reporters Tuesday afternoon that he was looking at a 12-week recovery timeline for his turf toe. Three months was the expectation, but he didn’t just accept that.
“Originally it was 12 weeks and then we’ll start to talk about it,” Burrow said. “But just like with any injury you start to learn more about it, and you start to ask questions about things you can and can’t do. You know, what do we have to avoid in certain time periods, post-surgery, and just kind of take it as it goes.”
Burrow was 52 days post-operation when he was cleared to practice for the first time. He had to bide his time during those 52 days, but he also had the help of Bengals director of rehabilitation and performance Nick Cosgray and head athletic trainer Matt Summers to really test how much he could do to recover quicker than expectation.
“I have a physical therapist in Nick [Cosgray] and trainers, mainly Matt [Summers], that really understood what stressed the repair, what we could and couldn’t do in certain time periods,” Burrow said. “We pushed it within the limits of what we could do, and kind of just based it on how how it was feeling, how I was recovering, how it looked the next day after we pushed it, and just went from there.”
Burrow pushed the limits successfully and is now set to come off the Reserve/Injured list officially before Thursday night’s game against the Baltimore Ravens.
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