Ever since embarking on his comeback journey from a torn ACL suffered in Week 2 of last season, Giants running back Saquon Barkley has been slowly turning baby steps into full-blown strides.
He'll continue his goal of making it toward the finish line on Wednesday when the Giants begin their week of preparation for their regular-season opener against the Denver Broncos on Sunday.
There is much optimism that the Giants' plan in bringing Barkley back along slowly this summer will pay dividends. The 24-year-old running back has seen his workload increase daily and has not experienced any known setbacks after each increased workload.
That progress, coupled with Barkley's positive attitude, has the Giants feeling good about getting one of their most important offensive skill players on the field at the very least in a limited role.
The next step for Barkley will come Wednesday, where all eyes in the organization will likely be focused on how the star running back moves around and responds to the increased live contact.
"We’ll be in pads on Wednesday. We’ll see a little bit more," head coach Joe Judge said Monday.
Judge refrained from declaring Barkley a full-go for Sunday's game, saying, "That won’t be decided until later in the week. I want to see how he responds to a couple things physically within his body and make the best assessment going forward for him this weekend and going forward past that."
Barkley took his first known live contact since his injury last week during a practice where the "hits" he took were thought to be minimal.
"I thought we had for the first day a good amount of it, of what we had to do, live contact last week," Judge said of that work.
The Giants head coach also sidestepped a question regarding how much of a factor the Giants' short turnaround after their game against Denver--they'll hit the road for a Thursday night game at Washington--would factor into any decisions.
"I think it’s independent of the player," he said. "In terms of just Saquon specifically, talking about the second game, we’re really focused on the first game right now. That second game is obviously a very real thing being a short turnaround, but the reality is we’ve got the Broncos coming this week and we’ve got to have all our attention on that.
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