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ESPN Daily

Turf Toe Tales: The NFL’s Most Dreaded Injury?

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.63.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Turf toe. It’s a known injury in football. But behind the cutesy name lies an injury NFL players dread more than any other, involving a teeny tiny bone in the foot. Turf toe can be incredibly painful and long lasting, with no real remedy for players other than time. And it can lead to permanent damage, if not properly healed. ESPN Senior Writer Dave Fleming takes us inside his cabinet of sports curiosities, with terrible tales of turf toe from around the NFL. Then, Pablo shares an update on the Ben Simmons saga. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

ESPN Daily is presented by supercuts, the smarter, easier way to get a haircut.

0:06.6

It's not just any haircut, it's supercuts.

0:14.1

Dave Fleming, I bring you on here because you like to make this bold claim that the entire NFL season can hinge on one injury.

0:25.3

So before you tell me about the condition, the injury, just tell me the impact that you believe this has across teams.

0:32.6

How big a deal is this thing?

0:34.4

This will change the direction of the NFL season, and it changed the entire Super Bowl last

0:42.0

year.

0:42.5

So how about that, Sergeant Holka?

0:46.8

The technical term is dorsaflection, hyper extension to the halix metatarsal philangial

0:53.4

joint, specifically the flexor hylexus

0:56.5

longest tendon and the sesamoid complex resulting in a planter capsulogigamentous sprain.

1:04.7

So I'm guessing that's like a knee thing or an Achilles thing.

1:11.6

Turftoe. Dave, Turftoe, I mean, I've heard of turf toe, but that sounds like floorburn to me.

1:18.6

It's like alliterative, it's kind of cutesy. It is a funny bone kind of aspect to its branding.

1:25.6

It just seems like something you'd make up to get out of gym class, honestly.

1:29.4

Oh, the first three people I asked or who talked to me about this story,

1:35.0

including my daughter, she said, turf toe, isn't, that's just athletes' foot, right?

1:40.4

It's just a fungus on the toe.

1:43.6

I'm like, no, this is actually a legitimate ligament and tendon injury that changes the course

1:52.1

of NFL seasons and Hall of Fame careers. And this entire league and $10 billion industry

1:59.6

all hinges on a tiny bone that is about roughly the size of a

2:05.2

pea.

...

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