Deebo Samuel, San Francisco’s top returning wide receiver, suffered a Jones fracture of his fifth metatarsal, a bone in his foot, and underwent surgical fixation on June 18, 2020.
Jones Fracture Fixation, Courtesy of Mark Adickes, MD.
The obvious question for fantasy football managers is what should we expect from a WR many of us were planning on targeting in our drafts? I’ll just start by saying that if 99% of people reading this article have surgical fixation of a Jones fracture, you’ll do best and minimize problems if you take it easy for five months following surgery. But that’s not what NFL players do. Almost all of them try to push the envelope and prove they’re iron men by coming back quickly.
If it’s early in the offseason and you can talk an NFL athlete into delaying his return to sport for four months, they’ll probably do fine. Even three months helps, but that still leaves some risk of needing a second surgery. But many young NFL athletes think they’re bulletproof and try to come back in 6-12 weeks. Then they struggle all year until the following offseason when they have their second surgery and realize that they really do need to stay off of it.
