The Bucs received good news when wide receiver Emeka Egbuka took a big step towards his recovery when he took to the practice field this week and began doing some physical testing of his injured toe. Egbuka suffered a turf toe injury in the first joint practice with the Jets on August 12 and hasn’t practiced since then.

At the time the Bucs were optimistic that he would be ready to go for the team’s Week 1 game at Cincinnati on September 13 and that prognosis seems to be on track. When footage of Egbuka’s workout with the Bucs medical staff hit the X social media platform, a pair of injury experts offered up their opinions on the recovery of Tampa Bay’s second-year receiver.

Bucs WR Emeka Egbuka Should Be Ready To Face The Bengals In Week 1

Dr. Jesse Morse has offered up his expertise from a far on multiple NFL player injuries and this was his takeaway from watching the video of Emeka Egbuka testing out his injured big left toe during workouts on Tuesday.

“They never specified exactly what it was, but more often than not it’s going to be a turf toe,” Dr. Morse began. “Now this is an injury to the big toe and what we call the plantar plate on the bottom. You can sprain the plate – think of it as a bubble – on the bottom of the bubble where you put your foot on the ground, you can have an injury to the plate where every time you push off it really hurts.

A Grade 1 is still substantial. Grade 2s are really rough. That plantar plate is partially torn and it causes a significant amount of pain. There’s a bunch of tendons that come up and attach here and the big toe is the balance center for the foot. So you can’t do a whole lot. Think about how much nerves are in your feet. It literally hurts like hell when you stub your toe.”

Bucs WR Emeka Egbuka – Cliff Welch/PR

Dr. Morse continued his discussion of Egbuka’s injury.

“Imagine partially tearing the most important part of the toe in the big foot, or in the of the foot in the big toe,” Dr. Morse said. “With that being said, think about how important this is for a route runner. Last year Joe Burrow had a full thickness tear of this. He came back, but he was very immobile and he was wearing probably steel toe shoes or something along that line. Brock Purdy had this – probably a type 1 or grade 1 similar to Emeka – re-injured it and then ended up missing probably another month or so, and finally it was able to get back.

“But remember, he’s not running routes. He’s literally just moving in the pocket. Now you need someone that’s gonna run here, stop, cut, rotate, try to shimmy, try to get rid of defenders. You need to be very mobile and aggressive so that’s why these take so long.”

Dr. Morse concluded that Egbuka may not be 100% for the season opener against the Bengals, but he should be able to play. And barring any setbacks, Egbuka should be able to move past this injury in about a more so.

“He’s progressing, but he’s not going to be 100% – but I believe he plays in Week 1,” Dr. Morse said. “The most important thing to understand here is that he’s got about a 25-ish% risk of re-injury. This will probably linger, and probably resolved by Week 4 to 6, assuming he doesn’t have any setbacks. But the good news is he’s a talented runner. I think he plays with a plantar plate – a metal little plate – in his shoe. … If you think about the foot, it’s the farthest away from your heart so it takes the longest to heal.”

The X account MEDspiration offered up a video simulation of what Egbuka may be suffering from with regards to his toe sprain.

“A toe sprain can mean stretching or partial tearing of the ligaments or plantar structures underneath the MTP joint. Today (September 1) marks Day 21 and this looks like late stage return to running, early sport-specific reconditioning. First, backward single leg hops, backward local motion can increase medial forefoot loading while testing how the injured foot handles repeated load. Then lateral drills add side-to-side force production and redirection through it.

“But this is the biggest test. Egbuka plants on the injured left foot at the MTP under load, then pushes off to change direction, break load stabilize and push off. Encouraging on video, but next-day pain, swelling, stiffness guide progression. If you can tolerate these without setback, data supports Week 1 at Day 32 post injury – just beyond the NFL medium return of 28 days overall. Great to see him progressing. Wishing him a safe and speedy recovery.”