It’s been over a month since we last saw Chris Godwin on a football field, and the last images are something that Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans would like to forget. Godwin was carted off on national television after suffering a season-ending ankle injury, something that brought what had otherwise been a tremendous season.

Not only did it end Godwin’s season but it threw the Bucs’ into total chaos. Mike Evans was lost in that same game but he ended up returning a few weeks later, while Godwin is out of the picture perhaps forever in Tampa Bay. His contract is up at the end of the season which means we might have seen him play his last down for the only team he’s ever known in the NFL.

Hopefully, that won’t be the case, as there’s still a decent chance the Bucs will do right by Godwin and bring him back on a fair deal that pays him well while also avoiding a free agency bidding war. Jason Licht managed to do that with both Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans last year, and it’s in the team’s nature to do the same with Godwin.

A positive sign is how involved he remains with the team, going as far as to be a guest on a recent edition of Buccaneers All Access where he gave details on his injury for the first time since it happened.

Chris Godwin gives details of his season-ending injury for the first time

It was a pretty candid conversation for something that amounts to an EKP for the team, which is why Godwin getting so real about what happened is proof of how comfortable he is with the team. More good news is that as bad as it looked in the moment, Godwin noted that it didn’t seem that way from his perspective.

“It definitely looked worse than it felt to me on the field. I went to try and get up and then I felt my legs kind of dragging across the ground,” Godwin said. “[The trainer] was like, hey you dislocated your ankle we’re going to have to put it back in place, and I was like ‘that’s great, let’s do it.”

Wow.

The initial moments after the injury didn’t make it look as bad as it ended up being, although that might have just been shock settling in for fans watching one of the best players on the team suffer such a devestating injury.

It’s more than just what the injury meant for the team on the field; the context of knowing all that Godwin had been through up to that point made it even more devastating. He tore his ACL late in the 2021 season which took him off the board for what could have been another Super Bowl run for the Bucs. Godwin returned in December 2022 but struggled under the first year of Dave Canales the following season. Liam Coen seemed to have unlocked a vintage version of Godwin through the first few weeks of this season, as he was on pace to be one of the top receivers in the league in terms of yards and was making a serious difference on offense.

All of that is against the backdrop of Godwin’s upcoming free agency, as everything was aligning for him to get a massive new contract either from the Bucs or elsewhere in the league. That came crashing down when he dislocated his ankle, which is why the injury stung even more than it otherwise would have.

Godwin’s return to Tampa Bay seems likely, though. The Bucs have a history of taking care of their players and that should once again be the case this offseason. Rather than use his injury against him like other teams might in order to save a few bucks, Jason Licht will probably go the same route he did with Baker and Evans to bring back one of the most important and beloved members of the team.

We’ll see what ends up happening, but Godwin already seems to be in good spirits and his eventual triumphant return is setting up to be epic.