Marvin Jones will remain on the nonfootball injury list for at least another few days, but Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell said he is not worried about the back injury keeping Jones out of training camp practice.
“He had a little back issue right before he came here,” Campbell said Monday in Allen Park. “It’s nothing major, but we knew we weren’t going to start him out at practice so we just NFI’d him. But he’s improving and we’re not in any hurry right now to try to get him back.”
The Lions placed Jones, the oldest player on their offense at 33 years old, on NFI at the start of camp Sunday, but Jones spent the early part of the team’s first practice running sprints with a trainer.
NFL teams must complete a four-day acclimation period before they are allowed to practice in pads for the first time. The Lions have practices Monday-Wednesday and an off day Thursday, and are expected to host their first padded practice Friday.
“We’ve got three more and then a day off, and then we’ll kind of assess it here as it goes,” Campbell said. “But we’re not worried about it.”
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Jones, who caught 289 passes for the Lions in 2016-20, signed a one-year free agent deal to rejoin the team in March after two seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
He is expected to compete for playing time in a receiving corps that will be shorthanded to start the year as Jameson Williams serves a six-game suspension for violating the NFL’s gambling policy.
Amon-Ra St. Brown, Kalif Raymond and Josh Reynolds are the Lions’ top returning receivers, and the team traded for Denzel Mims last week and spent a seventh-round pick on Antoine Green.
Campbell said cornerback Emmanuel Moseley is expected to rejoin the team by the end of the week.
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Moseley is excused from practice as he continues his rehab from the torn ACL he suffered last season with the San Francisco 49ers. Campbell said Sunday the Lions will place Moseley on the physically unable to perform list once he reports, after initially thinking he would be ready for the start of camp.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.