Why Giants' Braxton Berrios needed season-ending surgery | The Injury Report

This is the Injury Report, presented by NYU Langone Health. Giants wide receiver and return specialist Braxton Berrios has suffered another devastating injury. His 2026 season is over after undergoing surgery to repair a Lisfranc injury in his foot. But just how serious is this injury? What does the road to recovery look like? And can Berrios regain the explosiveness that made him such a dangerous return specialist? Joining me to break it all down this week on Injury Report is NYU Langone's foot and ankle surgeon, Dr. Kevin Schaefer, who joins me now. Dr. Schaefer, how's it going? Well, thanks for having me. I'm glad to have you here. Let me ask you this, Dr. Schaefer. We're going to start here. Braxton Berrios, he underwent surgery to repair a Lisfranc injury in his foot. For viewers who may not be familiar with this particular injury, what exactly is the Lisfranc joint complex and why can damage to this area be so serious for an NFL player? Yeah, that's a great question. This is a really critical injury, particularly for explosive athletes. you know the foot has 28 bones and a lot of them are really small and if i hold this little model up here you can see right in the middle of your foot is this row of bones really two row towards two rows towards the middle and that's what really allows you to transmit all that explosive force from your toes back through your ankle and up your leg and the Lisfranc complex it's known as the tarsometatarsal joint complex it really allows that shape of the foot to be maintained as you explode and drive through off your toes. So it's really important for football players, particularly dynamic players. In terms of what the complex involves, it's these bones and these very, very, very stout ligaments and capsule that maintain the shape of the foot. And the problem with a Lisfranc injury is if those ligaments are injured, there can be pain and loss of explosiveness because the foot is not stable right in the middle. When you look at the history of NFL players returning from Lisfranc surgery, and I know it can differ depending on the injury, what kind of surgery they had. How optimistic should we in general, Giants fans, should be about Berrios getting back to his pre-injury form, and what would you need to see if you were treating him during his rehabilitation to feel confident that he can make a successful return in 2027? Yeah, I mean, I would have pretty reasonable confidence. Some athletes never return to their prior form, but along the way, you know, we have a lot of fancy tools to evaluate athletes we look at things called proprioception which is their ability to have uh balance and and coordination of their foot in space and we compare it to their uninjured side and once they've met a level where they're at their pre-injury threshold or similar to the other side you know then we kind of let them go and see what they can do so you know again i'm optimistic i think we've come a long way with this injury a lot of athletes do really well and we'll have to see how he does but I'm optimistic.