Report from Howard Balzer on the Cardinals’ ‘bonus’ practice on Monday and who was practicing and who was not.
It was on Aug. 22, 88 days ago that Arizona Cardinals rookie defensive lineman Darius Robinson suffered a calf injury in the team’s final practice prior to the cut to 53 players.
Robinson was placed on injured reserve five days later and was then designated for return on Oct. 9. That inspired hope that he was trending toward being ready to play. That, of course, was not the case.
Robinson watched his fellow linemates during individual drills in that first practice and was listed on the injury report as limited, which has different meaning than players on the active roster.
Since then, Robinson has not practiced and during his 21-day window before being activated, he had to deal with the death of his mom. He was activated from injured reserve Oct. 28 with the window closing because not doing that would have made him unable to play for the remainder of the season.
Now, after being seen working on the side with the team’s sports performance staff in the days leading up to the Week 10 game against the Jets, there appears finally to be light at the end of the tunnel.
Head coach Jonathan Gannon told the media Monday morning, one hour before a “bonus” day of practice after returning from the bye, Robinson would be on the field. He did in fact participate in stretching and individual drills during the portion of practice open to the media. There will be no official injury report until Wednesday. The scheduled length of the practice was 65 minutes.
Gannon said, “When he’s out there, we’ll have a specific plan for him, but if he’s out there we feel good about him being out there.”
The even-keeled Gannon added, “It’ll be good to get him out there. It’s been a long time. He’s had a tough road. He had a tough injury and he’s working his tail off to get back out there. He wants to get back out there. He had a good week last week. The return-to-play (staff), all those people, did a good job with him. So we’ll take it one day at a time.”
Gannon said during the bye week, “We had multiple guys in here working, filling up the health bucket. He was obviously one of them. He had a good week. He did not have an off week.”
Understandably, Gannon would not speculate whether Robinson will be active for next Sunday’s game in Seattle.
When asked if he’ll be on a “pitch count” if deemed available to play, Gannon said, “One day at a time with that one. We’ll put the pieces together and do the thing we think is best to win the game.”
Missing from practice were safeties Jalen Thompson and Joey Blount. Thompson did not play against the Jets because of an ankle injury, while the reason for Blount’s absence is unknown.
Tackle Kelvin Beachum, who normally doesn’t practice on Wednesday, was on the field Monday.
As we figured after there was a visit to the Cardinals last Tuesday, also on the field was safety Andre Chachere, who was signed to the practice squad Monday. Chachere played 17 games for the Cardinals in 2023, but was released in the Aug. 27 cutdown to 53 players.
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