It is a bad time to be an offensive player on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who are dealing with injuries to three key starters in wide receivers Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and running back Bucky Irving, all of whom are on the injury report.
Irving (foot), Evans (hamstring) and Godwin (fibula) were all non-participants at Wednesday's practice, which wasn't much of a surprise for Evans and Irving considering both sat out last week.
However, Godwin's lack of participation and his being listed with a fibula issue is new. Now, like Evans and Irving, his status is up in the air for Week 6.
Here's an update from Thursday's practice.
Buccaneers injury updates
The Tampa Bay Times' Rick Stroud reported that neither Irving nor Evans nor Godwin were spotted at practice on Thursday.
"Did not see WR Chris Godwin, CB Benjamin Morrison, WR Mike Evans or RB Bucky Irving," Stroud reported.
With that, it looks like all three will be listed as non-participants for the second straight day this week, which puts all three in doubt for Sunday. The Bucs will officially roll out their injury report shortly as of this writing.
It isn't much of a surprise to see Irving unlikely to play.
After all, it was reported that Irving is expected to miss at least two games and he has only missed one so far. That said, the fact that he wasn't put on injured reserve suggests he won't miss more than three contests, so there's that.
Evans has missed two games thus far and it was anticipated that he wouldn't be out longer than that initially, but it appears that could happen now. Evans still has one more day to get right and he could play with just a limited session on Friday.
There hasn't been anything to indicate that Godwin is going to miss time and it's possible the Bucs are just managing his reps since he's fresh off a return from a significant injury. That said, his status still bears monitoring.
We'll get our final update of the week on Friday when the Bucs drop their last injury report.
If Godwin and Evans can't go, rookie phenom Emeka Egbuka will get absolutely peppered with targets. At running back, Rachaad White will be the lead man once again if Irving is sidelined.
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