Trevor Penning exited Sunday’s season-ending loss to the Carolina Panthers with a foot injury, and now we’ve got some details from New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen. Allen says Penning suffered a Lisfranc injury to his right foot, which NewOrleans.Football’s Nick Underhill reports should sideline him for five or six months. That puts Penning’s return in the middle of June, just in time for organized team activities during the summer. He should be good to go for training camp.
Still, that’s brutal. Penning started his rookie year with turf toe surgery on his left foot. He’s ending his rookie year with Lisfranc surgery on his right foot. It’s a really tough break for an inexperienced player who needs all the reps he can get after making the jump from a lower level of competition.
Penning’s lone start this year came in that regular season finale with the Panthers, and he put a lot of quality reps on tape as a run blocker — though he got beat here and there in pass protection, which makes sense given his skill set and strengths and weaknesses.
Hopefully his body responds well to treatment and he’s able to return to form and compete for a starting job over the summer. That’s not what you want to be saying about a player the Saints effectively traded the tenth overall pick in this year’s draft to acquire, but it is what it is. Let’s hope Penning plays well enough in the future to justify that move.
