Chargers tight end Hunter Henry tore an ACL in June. Less than four months after tearing his ACL, Henry can run in a knee brace.
“He looked real good,” coach Anthony Lynn said, via Jack Wang of the Los Angeles Daily News. “He did some start-and-stop stuff, a little bit of change of direction. It’s just so soon. It was amazing how he looked [Friday]. . . . He’s been doing some stuff on the side all along, but today, he kind of took it to another level.”
None of this means that Henry, who’s on the reserve/PUP list, will play this year. But it also doesn’t mean he won’t.
“The odds are much more that he’ll play next year and not this year, we know that,” General Manager Tom Telesco recently said. “But we figured let’s keep the window open if we can. I think it’s great for him. He has that little carrot at the end that maybe, maybe he could play. But we’ll be very, very smart with it. Everything would have to perfectly line up. We would never jeopardize Hunter’s long-term prospect with doing something now.”
A return this year wouldn’t be unprecedented, even for the Chargers. As Wang notes, defensive end Melvin Ingram tore an ACL in May 2013, and he played in early December.
The ability to recover from a torn ACL is unique to every player. For Henry, the good news is that everything is going well, so far.