After spending the last week traveling and getting the opinions of Dr. Arthur Ting as well as Dr. James Andrews, Terrell Thomas will return to Giants training camp Tuesday in hopes of rehabilitating his knee and getting back on the field, coach Tom Coughlin told reporters on Monday.
“He’s coming back to camp, he’ll jump into a rehab program, we’ll watch him very, very closely, we’ll hopefully accelerate his strengthening of the knee and see how soon he can join us and we’ll hope for the very best,’’ Coughlin said.
Thomas originally injured his knee over a week ago after colliding with wide receiver Domenik Hixon during a practice. Thomas began icing the knee and sat for the remainder of last Sunday’s practice. After being evaluated by the Giants vice president of medical services, Dr. Ronnie Barnes, it was determined that Thomas did in fact "re-injured his ACL," which would likely require an arthroscopic surgery to assess the damage.
However, on Monday Coughlin said a scope was never performed and that the “consensus” is that the knee is stable enough to attempt rehabilitation.
“He feels very positive about it,” Coughlin said. “He told me before he left he really doesn’t have any pain, does not feel instability, the knee was not swollen so he went down and Dr. Andrews pretty much agreed what the other doctors had said and what they felt was let’s try to rehab him and see if we can get him right back on the field.”
Coughlin agreed that this is probably the best-possible outcome for Thomas, who was in danger of missing his second consecutive season because of a knee injury.
Thomas is not out of the woods yet. If his knee doesn’t respond well to rehabilitation, there’s still a chance he could end up having surgery.
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