After a flying start last season, Chicago Bears wide receiver Rome Odunze had a big drop-off in production. It was eventually revealed that he had played for several weeks with a stress fracture in his foot before he missed the final five regular season games.
Odunze played in both of the Bears' playoff games, but he was clearly not at full strength. An offseason to rest and heal up was automatically going to do a world of good, and by all accounts, he has looked good during OTAs.
Odunze is also heading into a critical season for his career, as he looks to prove why he was a top-10 pick in the same draft the Bears got Caleb Williams in. Last season was not normal for him beyond the injury front, with a dose of drops and plays he should've made, but that adversity will make him better going forward.
Rome Odunze offers concerning (but not surprising?) outlook regarding his foot injury
Odunze spoke to reporters at OTAs. While his foot has healed, his candor about the injury's impact on ongoing rehab was striking. For at least one reporter, his words were particularly alarming.
"This is my new normal", Odunze said, via ESPN's Courtney Cronin. "And it’s not from a standpoint that I’m always in pain but the way my foot broke there’s callouses in there that like creates a different type of foot structure with those bones—different types of things that kind of shift things around. So my new normal was kind of what I am going into. And I don’t think that’s anything that’s going to prohibit me from making plays but I feel like with the break it’s just like when you tear your AC, it’s never really back to normal."
The exact nature of Odunze's foot injury is not entirely clear, so the risk of re-injury is also unclear. But feet are a high-impact part of any athlete's body, and we've particularly seen basketball players have recurring issues after they first suffered a break, stress fracture, etc.
So the residual effect of last year's foot injury is something Odunze is lined up to have to manage for the rest of his career, to whatever extent necessary. That may mean some missed practices here and there, and if he's ever listed with "foot" next to his name, alarms will go off.
Read more: Radio host thinks Bears have already failed to maximize a unique window to win
But hopefully, a significant stretch of missed games due to a foot issue will go down as a one-time thing that's already in Odunze's past.