Was the plantar plate ligament injured before my MRI?

I was recently doing a second opinion consultation with a runner over a webcam to review the MRI of his foot. 
 
What we found was that he had what looked to be attenuation and a partial tear in the plantar plate ligament on his MRI. 
 
There was a lot of inflammation in the foot around the ligament, not just within the ligament itself. 

He asked me was really good question:
 
“Could my plantar plate ligament been have injured long before I ever got an MRI?”
 
Well, that's what we're talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.