{"id":239203,"date":"2025-07-09T11:02:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/?p=239203"},"modified":"2025-07-09T11:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:02:05","slug":"breaking-buccaneers-tristan-wirfs-injury-to-start-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2025\/07\/09\/breaking-buccaneers-tristan-wirfs-injury-to-start-season\/","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING: Buccaneers To Be Without Offensive Cornerstone To Start Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will enter the season without superstar left tackle Tristan Wirfs, as he works his way back from a knee injury. According to <a  href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NFLSTROUD\/status\/1942956102166909304\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rick Stroud of the <em>Tampa Bay Times<\/em><\/a>, the former first-round pick recently underwent surgery on his right knee and will likely miss the first few weeks of the regular season.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_239205\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-239205\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-239205\" src=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Buccaneers Tristan Wirfs Injury\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/07\/Buccaneers-Tristan-Wirfs-Injury-1200x800.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-239205\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dec 15, 2024; Inglewood, California, USA; Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans (13) is congratulated by wide receiver Jalen McMillan (15) and offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs (78) after a touchdown in the second half against the Los Angeles Chargers at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Bucs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Bucs<\/a> are expected to start the season without All-Pro LT Tristan Wirfs, who recentlyhad surgery on his right knee, per <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NFLSTROUD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@NFLSTROUD<\/a>. He\u2019s likely to miss at least the first few games of the regular season. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/8CqwbKANSs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/8CqwbKANSs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MySportsUpdate\/status\/1942958355728744552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 9, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Breaking: Tristan Wirfs To Miss Start of 2025 With Knee Injury<\/h2>\n<p>While Stroud&#8217;s report doesn&#8217;t give an exact timeline for recovery, the Buccaneers will struggle to get by without arguably their best offensive player. Selected in the first round of the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/category\/nfl-draft\/\" target=\"_self\">2020 NFL Draft<\/a>, Wirfs has been a top-10 tackle since entering the league and finished the 2024 season with an 82.5 PFF grade, the ninth-best mark out of 81 eligible players.<\/p>\n<p>With Tristan Wirfs sidelined to injury, the Buccaneers will likely have an open competition for the left tackle job, with Charlie Heck having the best chance of winning the Week 1 position.\u00a0 Heck, a former fourth-round pick, has appeared in 50 games throughout his five-year career while making 23 starts, most of which came with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/category\/nfl-teams\/texans\/\" target=\"_self\">Houston Texans<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Wirfs originally began his career on the right side of the offensive line. Selected with the 14th-overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, the Iowa product immedaitely earned a starting job protecting first-year Buccaneer Tom Brady. With his help, the team made it to the playoffs and eventually defeated Patrick Mahomes and the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/category\/nfl-teams\/chiefs\" target=\"_self\">Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> in the Super Bowl. Wirfs maintained his hold on the starting job, becoming one of the game&#8217;s best right tackles before switching to the left side following the depature of Donovan Smith.<\/p>\n<p>Since entering the league, Tristan Wirfs has made four Pro Bowls and earned First-Team All-Pro honors on two separate occasions. He has started and appeared in 79 games.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo: Jim Dedmon &#8211; Imagn Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tampa Bay Buccaneers superstar left tackle Tristan Wirfs will miss the start of the season with a right knee injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2376,"featured_media":239206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,29],"tags":[246,7331,5901],"class_list":["post-239203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl-news","category-buccaneers","tag-nfl-news","tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers-news","tag-tristan-wirfs"],"modified_by":"David Latham, Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239207,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239203\/revisions\/239207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}