It has been nearly 15 months since Jordy Nelson suffered a torn ACL in his right knee, and the Green Bay Packers star admits he still has not gotten back to full speed.
Nelson is on pace for 1,000 receiving yards this season and ranks second among NFL receivers with seven touchdown catches, but anyone who has watched him knows he is hardly the same explosive player we saw in 2014. Nelson knows it, too, and he now understands why players say you have to wait until your second season back from major knee surgery to really feel normal again.
“Yeah, and until you experience it you probably don’t know,” he told Rob Demovsky of ESPN.com this week. “Hopefully we’re having that conversation next year.”
During his career-best 2014 season, Nelson was arguably the biggest deep-ball threat in football. This year, he has caught just three passes that were thrown 30 or more yards downfield. That doesn’t necessarily mean his surgically-repaired knee is bothering him, however.
“I think it’s more just your body getting back to normal overall,” Nelson said. “If you take a year off from the game, the grind of the season, the recovery every week, all that I think is more part of it than the actual knee I would assume.”
It doesn’t help that Nelson is 31, so there’s a chance he may never get back to where he was two years ago. That hasn’t stopped Aaron Rodgers from throwing to him, as Nelson leads the Packers with 71 targets this season.
A report we heard a couple of weeks ago indicated the Packers are concerned about Nelson. Considering how important he is to a passing offense that has struggled, we don’t blame them. Green Bay fans can only hope Nelson continues to trend in the right direction down the stretch.
