It's still unclear if Jets running back Stevan Ridley, an offseason free agent pickup, will fully participate in practice at the start of training camp. Ridley didn't get any 11-on-11 team periods work in the spring. He tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his knee during an October game against the Bills. Ridley isn't sure if he'll be 100 percent healthy by the start of camp. He doesn't want to put any undue pressure on himself with expectations about his return to practice, either.
"I really can't predict the future, man," Ridley said Thursday. "I just know that, for me, I've got to be ready for Week 1. That's the goal right now. I'm not going to set myself up for any false hope or say that I'm going to do something that I'm not. What I will say is I'm working hard. I've just got to make sure that I'm 100 percent healthy, and that when I do hit the field, I'm making an impact." Ridley said his knee is "doing well."
Ridley's standing on the team, as the season approaches and he continues to recover, will partly be determined by "what the guys do in front of him," HC Todd Bowles said.
"If all those guys are playing well and he gets limited time, then it's going to be tough [for Ridley]," Bowles said. "If those guys aren't doing very well, and he comes in and makes a splash, then you go by that. Only time will tell. We knew he needed time [to recover]. We want him healthy, and there's no hurry to get him healthy, because we have good running backs on the roster. When we brought him in, we knew it was going to be a process. We didn't know how long [it would take for Ridley to recover], but we knew he had time, and he can take his time. There's no urgency for him to get healthy."
It sounds as if RIdley is going to be buried on the depth chart if Chris Ivory, Bilal Powell and Zac Stacy are performing well. Our money is on Ivory to continue to be the lead back for the Jets, but the team did try to upgrade the position this offseason.
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