Cornerback D.J. Hayden was back at a Raiders practice on Monday, a few days after he was released from the hospital following an operation to clear out scar tissue in his abdomen.
As you’d imagine, Hayden didn’t practice with the rest of the team. He won’t be practicing again at all during the spring and coach Dennis Allen addressed the timeline for Hayden’s future during his post-practice press conference. The team expects Hayden to be back on the field for training camp, although the coach admitted that things are less clear than they might be if Hayden had suffered a more typical football injury.
“Everything went fine,” Allen said, via Steve Corkran of the Bay Area News Group. “Everything was kind of as we had hoped and anticipated. Hey, listen, it’s a little bit of uncharted waters, but we still feel comfortable that he’ll be back and ready to go in camp. We still have seven weeks before we start training camp. It’s 51 days from now until we start training camp. We feel confident he’ll be back and be ready to go.”
There isn’t a lot of history when it comes to players suffering torn inferior vena cavas during their final year of college so the Raiders would be wise to proceed with caution when it comes to moving Hayden back into the mix.