Dr. Jung opines on star quarterback’s strain right foot injury.
Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert sustained an injury to the plantar fascia in his right foot, but is expected to be ready for the start of the regular season, the team announced Thursday. The Chargers said the injury was diagnosed following Wednesday’s training camp practice.
According to the team, doctors recommended Herbert wear a walking boot on his right foot for approximately two weeks, followed by a gradual return to play.
Herbert did not miss a rep with the first-team offense in Wednesday’s practice so it’s unclear when this injury actually occurred. Herbert did have three runs during the practice: a designed keeper on the second play of 11-on-11 drills, a long scramble up the right sideline in a two-minute sequence and a situational end-of-game/end-of-half designed run to the sideline in a later period.
Herbert, 26, is coming off a 2023 season where he missed four games with a broken finger on his right hand. The Chargers only went 5-8 with Herbert as the starter last year.
The Chargers officially labeled this as an “an injury to the plantar fascia” in Herbert’s right foot. There is a key distinction between an injury to the plantar fascia and plantar fasciitis, according to Dr. Kenneth Jung, a foot and ankle consultant for the Los Angeles Rams who is an orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan Jobe Institute.
“Plantar fasciitis is more like a degenerative condition with people who have chronic heel pain,” Jung said. “That’ll just be flat-out pain, and if you have pain, you can play through it if you can control the pain. If it’s an injury, then in my mind that would imply that it’s trauma-caused, something like a strain or partial tearing or stretching of the tissue.”
Added Jung: “If it’s something where they’re putting him in a boot and they’re saying it’s an injury, I wouldn’t think it’s plantar fasciitis.”
The plantar fascia is the arch ligament on the bottom of the foot. Jung said the Chargers putting Herbert in a boot indicates they are “trying to protect the tissue.”
“It can turn into something chronic or linger just because of the sense that we’re always on our feet, standing, walking,” Jung said. “We’ve always got load there. Versus if it’s a hand, you can rest it somewhat. And that’s where it can definitely be something chronic, especially in an athlete where they continue to try to play on it. You can aggravate it. The hope is that I would imagine they’re letting it calm down, letting the thing heal, and then as long as they protect it — taping, insoles, things like that — than you can prevent it from getting aggravated or re-injured.”
Herbert will be in the boot for approximately two weeks, according to the Chargers. The team said Herbert is expected to be ready for the start of the regular season.
Is that a realistic timeline?
“A lot of it depends on what grade of a strain it is, how extensive the injury is,” Jung said. “But I think if it’s a small strain, then yeah, two weeks would probably be reasonable. It’s so early in the year that I think they’re going to try to err on the side of caution. They got months to go.”
