Another year, another injury. Just months after signing with the Buffalo Bills, DE Joey Bosa is already on the sidelines with a calf injury suffered sometime the week before Memorial Day.
This is just the latest injury for the frequently injured pass rusher in his career. The hope was that a new home and reduced workload would lead to new life and resetting his market. Bosa is expected to be out the rest of spring practices but should be ready for training camp.
Today’s article will analyze the injury and concerns moving forward entering training camp.
The Anatomy
The calf muscle is made up of three muscles in the back of the leg with the superficial muscle being the gastrocnemius, comprising of two heads, and the deeper muscle being the soleus and plantaris. This muscle group plantar flexes or flexes the foot downward which allows a person to drive their leg forward necessary to walk, run, and jump. All of these muscles combine together to form the Achilles tendon.
Risk Factors
Some of the biggest risk factors for a calf strain is age and prior history of calf strain. What’s interesting is that Bosa has not had any prior instances of calf strains.
Other risk factors involve history of prior lower leg injuries, high BMI, improper warmups, and L5 radiculopathy. Looking at Bosa’s risk factors, he is 29, is a large human, and has had plenty of prior leg injuries. We don’t know if he has any back issues and that can’t be assumed as a primary cause.
Mechanism of Injury
The most common mechanism of injury is when the knee is fully extended and the ankle is in full dorsiflexion. This is observed during sprinting and jumping during the push off stage when it transitions from an eccentric contraction to concentric. The most common area that is injured is medial gastrocnemius.
There is increased risk of injury due to the muscle crossing two joints (knee and ankle) and has a high density of Type II fast twitch muscle fibers.
Much of the activities the players were participating during Phase 2 OTA’s in were weight lifting, running, sled pushing, and activities such as tug-of-war.
Injury Analysis
Joey Bosa suffered his calf strain just prior to the Memorial Day break. The last day we saw the Bills players working out was May 22 according to the pictures from the website below. This gives us an accurate starting point for his recovery timeline.
We don’t know exactly how he suffered the injury, but it was severe enough that the team decided to shut him down for the rest of spring practices. While the grade severity is not known, the team is shutting him down for several reasons. They only have the last week of May along with the first two weeks in June which ends with mandatory minicamp on June 12. For an injured player to attempt to practice dealing with an injury only increases the risk for delayed healing and the potential to worsen the issue.
From my observations, the Bills have historically shut down players who have been working through injury around this time during the spring and this should be no exception. There simply isn’t enough time available to rehab and return to play for the timeline present for there to be a meaningful benefit at this time during the year.
Finally, the average timeframe for a player to return to football after suffering a calf strain is 17.4 days, +/-14.6 days. Working with the knowledge that he suffered the calf strain on May 22, this would take him to June 8 following the average timeline missed. Mandatory minicamp starts on June 10. For the Bills to shut him down to rehab and then ask him to go at 100 percent even with proper rest and rehab would be a disaster with a high chance at re-injury.
Even when Bosa does return, there is a 20 percent chance he re-injuries his calf not just this year, but for the remainder of his career. However, diving further into the research noted that 24 defensive ends suffered a calf strain over a 10 year period and only two suffered re-injury. Fortunately, there is no drop off in performance upon return to play.
Given Bosa’s lengthy injury history, I would place his concern for reinjury higher than his counterparts.
Final Thoughts
The wording of Sean McDemott stating that Bosa would be shut down for the spring and be ready for training camp is accurate but shouldn’t invoke major concern. The Bills have between nine and ten weeks before training camp officially kicks off at St. John Fisher. Joey Bosa will be healthy by then from his calf strain, that part should be pretty accurate. Even if this was a severe calf strain that lasted weeks, this is still ample time for him to rehab and recover.
The bigger issue I have is whether he can maintain his fitness as he rehabs without aggravating the calf. There are plenty of ways to do this through using the Alter-G treadmill, pool workouts, lifting, and slowly loading the tissue through various activities. I also worry about other injuries such as groin, hamstring, quadriceps due to any compensation patterns or while rehabbing. He has the resources, timeframe, and staff necessary to fully recover. Bosa should be healthy and able to pass a physical, but how much ramp up time will he need without suffering another injury?
Regardless of what the activity that Bosa was doing, we don’t have any reports of any other players dealing with a similar injury which indicates that this was an unfortunate accident. The Bills knew what his injury history looked like when signing him and how they wanted to limit his reps to keep him healthy and fresh. This issue is just the latest injury that Joey Bosa is dealing with. Bosa must be able to have an elite first step off the line of scrimmage, bend the edge, and drive towards the pocket in order to excel at his position. This all requires a strong and healthy gastrocnemius.
The only variables we can’t account for is he has a setback over the summer or if this injury is way worse than the team is letting on. Considering when the injury happened, the timeline for recovery, and time until camp, this injury is more ill-timed than anything else regarding spring practice. However, I would rather have an injury now with extra time to recover versus something the first week of camp. I do expect to see Bosa on the injury report during training camp and during the season, I just didn’t think we’d hear about an injury so soon.
I wish Joey Bosa the best in his rehab and to be fully healthy come late July.
Top Photo Credit: Perry Knotts/Getty
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