Blake Cashman knew something was wrong as soon as it happened on October 6 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

After dealing with the pain during the game itself, he remembers sitting in the locker room at halftime, thinking about how he wanted to deal with it. He decided to just tighten his cleat and move on.

“You just have to fight and finish the game,” Cashman said. “I was like, ‘We’ll go ahead and worry about this later.'”

Although the Vikings ultimately earned a 23-17 victory over the New York Jets, they ended up losing Cashman in the process. He was evaluated after the Vikings returned to Minnesota and diagnosed with turf toe. As a result, he missed games against the Detroit Lions, Los Angeles Rams and Indianapolis Colts.

“It was something I had never experienced before,” Cashman said. “I had no idea what it was.”

What is turf toe? Think of it more or less like a joint sprain of the foot.

Stretching or tearing the ligaments of the big toe, in particular, causes sharp pain in and around the area and makes it incredibly difficult to push off the ground in certain scenarios. This might help explain why Cashman has been out for a month.

“The big toe has a lot of mechanics in terms of jumping, cutting, balance and power,” Cashman said. “Just losing that makes it very difficult to go out and do my job at a high level. »

The good news is that Cashman returned to practice this week at the TCO Performance Center and he appears to be on track to make his return to action when the Vikings take on the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday afternoon at EverBank Stadium.

“As long as I feel good enough to put my team in a position to win, I’ll be out there,” Cashman said. “I would never selfishly make the decision to go when I know I can’t perform at the level I need to.”

As much as he wanted to compete with his teammates over the past month, Cashman knew he wasn’t 100 percent and wouldn’t have been able to do what he does best. He also operated cautiously so as not to risk further injury as he did early in his career with the New York Jets.

“I’ve always been the type of person to put a little dirt on it and say, ‘Let’s do it,’” Cashman said. “There was a time when I was rushing in not knowing if I was ready to go and it ended up costing me more matches than I would have liked.”

He wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time. Not that the Vikings would have let him.

“I have a lot of confidence in our sports medicine team,” Cashman said. “We’re going to continue to do what they have planned for me and make sure I’m available for as many games as possible.”