9/25/25: Dr. Nick Early From OrthoCincy, on Joe Burrow and Spencer Steer

Dr. Nick Early from OrthoCincy joined us to discuss the timeline for Joe Burrow's return as well as his rehab.  We also talked about Spener's Steer's popped rib. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now right, we do this once a week we chat
with one of the experts from Ortho Sincy Orthopedics in
sports medicine. The great thing about Orthosincy is they've got specialists,
locations and services all over the Tri State. This includes
walk in orthopedic urgent care at five locations with extended
evening and weekend hours and Edgewood and Anderson. Learn more

(00:21):
at orthosinc dot com. That's orthos ci Ncy dot com.
Doctor Nick Early from Orthosincy is with us. I gotta
ask you about Spencer Steer's rib. But first, Joe Burrow,
the surgery has happened and everybody is clinging to this timeline,
this best case timeline three months he can maybe come

(00:42):
back and play. So based on what you know and
we'll go through his rehab process. Is the three month timeline,
which feels very very optimistic. Is it at all realistic?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, So, just as you mentioned, three months would probably
be about the best case scenario. So after you have
a surgery, we're repairing a turf toe type of injury,
there's a period of time where you're off your foot
and you're really just got to allow that to heal
and so you really can't do a whole lot during
that time. And then there's some limited amount of you know,
therapy things you can do to try to reduce swelling
or do some things to kind of help with just

(01:15):
kind of early recovery type of stuff, but you really
can't do a whole lot from a physical standpoint. So
you know, the beginning, you're just kind of healing up,
and then you kind of start, you know, working your
way back a little bit towards weight bearing and doing things.
So really three months is kind of the earliest that
you're able to really start doing more high live lack
athletic activity. So oftentimes it can't take longer than that.

(01:37):
And so I think when you're looking at okay, we'll
come back to play, start doing the math, then you know,
things start to come into play with is it worth
the risk? You know how many games are left that
type of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
So walk me through the rehab process. Obviously, I'm sure
he's still in recovery mode, but but when he starts
to rehab, kind of just walk me through what that's
going to look like up until his actual return to
the field.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Sure, so once you get through the early recovery phase
where you can start putting more weight on it, start
doing more dynamic activity. Early on, it's it's very slow,
you're just starting to get things moving again, and then
it's kind of a gradual increase in trying to put
more force on it and acclimate your body once again
to everything, and then you start, you know, working back

(02:21):
towards those more dynamic activities, you know, where you're trying
to be able to run, push off, jump, do all
those things that you know are required in order to
play football.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Are there potential setbacks and what are they?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
For sure? You know, early on after any surgery, there's
always some you know, potential for complications. Those things are
pretty rare, especially in a young healthy person. You know,
things like incisional issues are infection of those types of things,
So those are less the concern. More so you're you're
worried about just you know, pain, swelling initially, just kind
of being able to work through that so you can
start doing some of those rehab type of activities. As

(03:00):
you're rehabbing, it's it's critical not to go too fast
so that you don't re injure the repair, and that's
probably the biggest thing. It's just making sure that you're
kind of following, you know, a protocol that really you know,
focuses on trying to work back towards that activity, you know,
the targeted date, but at the same time making sure
that you're kind of, you know, being smart about it

(03:21):
so that you don't undo what you did.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
So there's there's only so much that he can do,
and yet you want to maintain conditioning, you want to
maintain cardio, you want to maintain strength. What can be
done to do that while he is recovering and rehabbing
this injury to his foot.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
That's a great question. So there are some things you
can you can do, you know, once you're able to
move around little bit, there's definitely some different ways to
kind of keep your cardo up without being run. Oftentimes,
you you'll get people in a pool and start doing
some stuff that can kind of you know, work your
muscles in a certain way. There's you know, there's a
lot of different kind of you know, different machines and

(03:58):
different things that training have that can kind of help
with that. There's like a treadmill that has you know,
as an ability to kind of reduce the stress you're
putting on your low extremities when you're starting to work
work on walking and running as well. So there's a
lot of different cool technological things, but at the same time,
a lot of it just has to do with just
kind of slowly working back and acclimating.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
One more on Joe Burrow specifically, the Bengals play in
Denver on Monday. He is not allowed to travel with
the team. Why would that be.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Early on? You know, I don't know if there's any
particulars in that situation just regarding you know, roster spots
or anything like that, but early on, right after a surgery,
there's somewhat of a risk of, you know, of traveler
or sitting in one position for a long period of time.
Sometimes you're a little bit concerned about traveling just in
terms of possibility of blood clots or other things like that.

(04:50):
So sometimes people will be recommended not to travel for
a period of time. You know. Oftentimes that's not the case,
you know, for for a foot surgery, you know, as
much it would be for certain other types of injuries,
but that may be a consideration.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Uh. One more to ask you about Spencer Steer, who
obviously has kind of caught fire here recently, but I
read last week that he was dealing with a rib issue,
a rib that popped out of place, and they apparently
popped it back in place. I can't tell you how
painful that sounds. So Number one, how does a rib

(05:24):
get dislocated? Number two? How does this work when we
pop a rib back in place?

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Good question? So interesting. Your ribs are you know, kind
of attached your you know, and like kind of two
you know, you can think about him as like, okay,
it's a long, skinny bone. It's kind of cached in
two ends. So on the back it's attached your spine,
and there's kind of two little spots where it kind
of sits up against your spine, there's you know a
bunch of ligaments that kind of attach it there. And
the front, depending on which ribs you're talking about, it's

(05:50):
kind of either attached directly to your your storm your breastbone,
or you know, there's some like cartilage that's kind of
the lower ones could be attached to. So and either
of those spots, there's a possibility of things kind of
you know, shifting out of place or something happened, you
can imagine, and somebody who's putting on extreme you know,
torque forces on their their upper body, like a you know,
baseball player high level who obviously has really strong upper

(06:13):
bodies able to you know, swing through with their their
trunquately high energy that that could potentially cause some issues there.
In terms of instability, it's a pretty uncommon injury. You know,
it's hard to diagnose sometimes if that happens and there's
so like a little bit of intibility or something slips
out of place, you know, sometimes it's difficult to even

(06:34):
image that or see that, and so sometimes it does
take somebody who's really adept to kind of figuring out, okay, hey,
you know, this seems like this may be you know,
what's going on. In terms of the actual techniques you know,
for trying to get things like that back into place.
A lot of times there is you know, a chiropractor
or somebody who has more you know, hands on experience
with manipulation or certain types of you know, modalities. It's

(06:55):
not usually anything that's going to be like a surgical thing.
Rarely to be have like instability issues of the ribs
that require surgery. You know, that's not a very common thing,
but it is. It is one of those interesting injuries
that oftentimes is missed.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, I don't think I had ever read about a
rib being popped back into place. I'm hopeful I never
have to deal with that awesome insight. As always, I
appreciate the time.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
All right, thank you.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
All right, there you go, Doctor Nick Early from Ortho
sincey we say it every week because it's true. The
great thing about Orthosincy is they have specialists and locations
all over the Tri State. This includes walk in orthopedic
urgent care weekdays from nine a m. To nine pm
and on Saturdays from nine am to one pm at
both Edgewood and Anderson. It's easy because you do not

(07:44):
need an appointment, and it's definitely cheaper than going to
an er. Whenever you have an urgent orthopedic injury, check
out Orthosinc. Dot com. That's Ortho ci Ncy dot com.