As the rest of their teammates went through stretching and position drills, three Detroit Lions spent the early part of NFL training camp practice Tuesday in Allen Park working on the back field alone with a trainer in the end zone.
Marvin Jones, who is on the nonfootball injury list with a back injury, ran sprints full speed the width of the field. Jameson Williams, who left early in Monday’s practice with a leg injury, did some light resistance work. And C.J. Gardner-Johnson stretched in place and walked gingerly through a backpedal.
Gardner-Johnson declined to stop for reporters as he left the field one day after being carted off with a knee injury, but the NFL’s co-interception leader last season promised, “I’ll be better,” as he limped to the locker room. Lions coach Dan Campbell said Gardner-Johnson seemed to avoid serious harm.
“It appears to be that he’s going to be OK,” Campbell said before practice Tuesday. “It doesn’t appear to be anything serious. So we’ll see. The images look pretty good. He may be out a day or two but, yeah, seems to be OK.”
Gardner-Johnson, who is expected to play key minutes as a slot cornerback and safety this fall, watched most of practice from the sideline while Will Harris took his place with the first-team defense.
The Lions are well-stocked in the secondary after signing Gardner-Johnson, Cam Sutton and Emmanuel Moseley to free agent contracts this offseason and adding Brian Branch in the draft, and Gardner-Johnson is experienced enough that missing a few days or weeks in training camp, should his recovery drag on, shouldn’t impact his development.
Sutton said he was relieved to learn Gardner-Johnson’s injury wasn’t serious.
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“Anytime you have any of your brothers go down, you obviously got to take a moment to just put heals, hands and prayers over them,” Sutton said. “That’s something that you never want to see, and obviously he’s in great spirits. His energy’s still high even coming off of that, and we’ll just be excited to get him back when we can when he’s healthy.”
Gardner-Johnson spent more than five minutes on the ground Monday and could not put pressure on his leg after he was helped to his feet. He wore a compression sleeve on his right leg Tuesday, and on one occasion pointed to the outside of his knee as he talked with a Lions trainer.
Campbell said he never considered the worst case scenario with Johnson, even as players approached their teammate to offer support before he left practice Monday on a medical cart.
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“Any player that you see goes down, it affects you because you don’t want that for any of your players,” Campbell said. “I don’t care who it is, and I don’t care if they’re free agents, rookie free agents, high-priced guys. It doesn’t matter. You don’t want that for anybody. But honestly, I’ve been around this long enough, everybody reacts different to injuries, every player, and you just don’t know. And so until you get the information, I don’t let my mind go there. My next thought was, ‘OK, well, Will’s in. Let’s go.’ But obviously to hear the news now you feel a lot better about it.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.