As with most players coming back from injuries, the Giants don’t seem eager to rush wide receiver Hakeem Nicks back into a preseason game.
But they were encouraged by his return to the practice field Monday, his first work in team drills since breaking his foot in OTAs this spring.
“He seemed to be pretty good, seemed to feel good,” Giants coach Tom Coughlin said, via Mike Garafolo of the Newark Star-Ledger. “He moved around well and did a good job with it.”
Nicks took about half the first-team snaps in practice, yielding to Domenik Hixon for the rest. But he made several nice plays when he was out there.
“I’ve been running routes now for about two weeks,” Nicks said before practice. “I ran every route in the route book and haven’t had a problem. I just have to go out there and take care of the things I need to take care of and stay on top of it.”
They’ll monitor him this week to see if he plays against the Bears, to make sure there are no setbacks with the foot.
“We’ll see,” Coughlin said when asked about Nicks playing in the preseason. “We’re going to go slow just to make sure there’s never a setback. He’s very anxious to do more, but we’ll go slow.”
Unless he’s playing Friday, when the starters do their main work of the preseason, there’s not much point playing him in the finale against the Patriots.
Of course, that assumes there’s much value in anyone playing in that final game, when most teams are just trying to slide through without damage.