Over the course of their two-day draft haul, the Los Angeles Rams selected three players with injury histories. Terrell Lewis’ past is well-documented, and linebacker Clay Johnston missed time in 2019 due to a torn ACL in October, but Van Jefferson is also recovering from an injury of his own.
A Jones fracture in his foot was discovered by doctors at the NFL combine, requiring surgery. It isn’t a devastating injury, but for a wide receiver, any foot ailment is going to be taken into consideration.
Jones is still expected to be fine for the 2020 season, whenever it begins, and shared an update on how his foot is doing after being drafted by the Rams in Round 2. He walked through how the injury was discovered and where he’s at in the recovery process.
“They did the medical stuff on Monday and Tuesday. Then, I was preparing to run and stuff on that Wednesday, training with my facility that chose,” he said. “Started training and then that Wednesday, a runner came and got me and said, ‘Hey, they want to push you down to the medical.’ So, I went down to the medical and they wanted to do an MRI and an X-Ray on my foot, so they went and did that. They found a Jones fracture in my foot and I had the surgery on March 5 and right now, I’m 90 percent healthy. I’m in a shoe right now, jogging in the AlterG. It’s going good.”
The injury obviously didn’t cause Jefferson to miss any time last season at Florida, since it wasn’t discovered until the combine. And in part because of that, he wasn’t worried it would impact his draft stock.
“I really wasn’t too worried about it because at the end of the day, it’s going to happen when it’s going to happen,” Jefferson said. “It happened to be the Rams and I’m so excited and I couldn’t be more excited for this to happen.”
Interestingly enough, Jefferson never expected the Rams to draft him. He had very little contact with the Rams before the draft outside of a meeting at the combine. He didn’t even have a FaceTime call with them, which is surprising to learn.
“The last interaction I had with them was at the combine actually. We had an informal meeting and I was meeting with the receiver coach and I kind of got a good feeling from him. I didn’t think that they would be a team that was interested in me, but it’s something that you just don’t know.
“I didn’t have a FaceTime meeting with them throughout the whole process, so I didn’t know that there was interest.”
Jefferson is thrilled to be a member of the Rams now, and plans to do everything he can to help the team in 2020 and beyond.