There was some real concern in April after a picture of Detroit Lions‘ defensive back Brian Branch in a walking boot and using a scooter to get around showed up on social media. Many were wondering how bad the injury could be and could it affect Branch’s ability to be at camp.
In late May we got an update from Lions’ head coach Dan Campbell on what was up with Branch and what his timeline looked like.
“He just had a little clean up there. Something that coming out of last year that – thought it might heal, and then it just ended up being, ‘You know we better get this thing done.’ So anyway, that’s where he’s at. That and I think he likes riding a scooter. But we feel like he’s progressing well, we feel like he’ll be ready to go in camp, if not early enough – it’ll be certainly he’ll get enough reps and be ready for the season. That’s how we feel right now.”
On Tuesday we got another encouraging update on Instagram. Branch is in the gym strength training with performance specialist Christian Van Buren and he’s wearing no boot and obviously not on a scooter.
We still need to see him running, but we know now that he can plant on it and it’s not affecting his ability to get in the gym and do some work. There’s still about three more weeks to get ready for the July 23rd report date for training camp. Right now it looks like he’s going to be ready to go.