Bucky Irving injury: What status means for Week 13 vs. Cardinals

The 6-5 Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the 4-7 Arizona Cardinals as 2.5-point home favorites this Sunday. Their starting quarterback, Baker Mayfield, looks like he will try to play through his shoulder sprain, while they could get their starting running back, Bucky Irving, back this week.

Game day morning update: Bucky Irving is expected to play on Sunday in spite of his questionable tag, per Ian Rapoport. Adam Schefter is reporting the Bucs “don’t want to overdo it with [him],” so we’ll see if that ends up being a touch limit. I doubt it, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Irving hasn’t played since Week 4, as he’s been dealing with shoulder and toe injuries. But it looks like he will finally return this week, as head coach Todd Bowles announced he would. The questions now are how much will he play and will it be enough to give us fake footballers a good reason to start him?

The Buccaneers have three strong backs in Rachaad White, Sean Tucker and Irving. Irving is the starter though and that’s where they want him. But will he get a starter’s portion of work in his first game back? His OC Josh Grizzard compared his possible workload this week to that of Chris Godwin in Week 12, which wasn’t great. Godwin played around 30% of the snaps. But, later in the week Bowles said they would see how things go and lean more into the “hot hand” approach.

So, there is a chance Irving gets going and is just playing too well to take him out for long periods of time. Of course, that means there is potential for Tucker or White to do the same. Irving’s upside will be tough to sit on your bench, but if you have options that are safer, you may want to wait another week.