How Lisfranc Injuries Affect Fantasy Football (Najee, Bateman)
Players with a Lisfranc injury 2022 season: Najee, Bateman,
2021: Etienne
Previously, Marquise Brown, Le’Veon Bell, Elijah Mitchell
Anatomy
The Lisfranc joint, also called the “tarsometatarsal joint” is the joint where the midfoot connects to the forefoot. There are 3 main types of injuries that can occur to this complex- sprains, fractures, dislocations.
The Lisfranc ligament is a ligament that attaches from the medial cuneiform (bone 1 in the image) to the second metatarsal. Without getting too into the medical side of things, when this ligament is sprained, it can affect the alignment of the midfoot leading to fracture. The treatment essentially depends on how much integrity the ligament still has. In Najee’s case last season, he was probably able to opt for conservative treatment because the sprain wasn’t bad enough to be a considered a fracture or dislocation.
What does the research say about NFL players returning to play (RTP)?
16 of 19 NFL players from 2000 to 2010 were able to RTP with a mean time of 11 months. This study concluded that there was a slight decrease in performance, but it was not statistically significant. They also found that there is no significant difference in career length. The authors of this paper state that a return to pre injury performance is a possibility after a Lisfranc injury.
Another study looked at professional rugby and NFL players who suffered Lisfranc injuries. They looked at 47 athletes (35 NFL, 12 rugby). Half had ligament injuries, and half had fractures. Among NFL players, 83% returned to play at around 10 months. They had a statistically significant decrease in performance in season 1 following the injury, but returned to preinjury levels after the first season. However, they played in less games in year 2 and year 3. This was similar among both ligamentous injuries and fractures. This study is similar to what we know about ACL injuries, and how they affect performance year 1 before returning to normal in most cases.
Another study tried to determine if increasing snap counts contributed to risk for Lisfranc injury, but they found no significant difference, suggesting that it is not an overuse injury but likely just a freak, acute injury. Because of this, I would be hesitant to label these players as injury prone.
Conclusions for fantasy
The lack of high quality evidence among elite athletes makes it difficult to draw real conclusions from this research, so feel free to draw your own conclusions. The research is split on whether year 1 after injury results in a decrease in performance, here are my thoughts:
Since Najee suffered a sprain in preseason, his performance was likely affected for the entire season, considering ligamentous injuries return to high level athletics in around 6 months typically. For someone like Rashod Bateman, I would start to be a little bit concerned due to him having setbacks and needing cortisone injections. Since we hae 2 studies with conflicting information on RTP year 1, I would guess Bateman will likely see a decrease in performance due to the fact that he is already having setbacks.
As always I’m happy to engage in any discussions or answer questions!