The Jacksonville Jaguars love what they’ve seen so far from Calvin Ridley on the practice field. Now the goal is to make sure the wide receiver is healthy and ready to play full-speed in the fall after nearly two years on the sidelines.
“You just want to be careful with him,” Jaguars coach Doug Pederson said of Ridley on Tuesday morning. “He hasn’t played in a while, plus the injury. We’re just trying to be careful with him. He’s done an outstanding job for us.
“He’s the type of guy that you kind of have to pump the brakes with. He wants to go so much, and so fast, and so hard in practice that we just kinda have to pump the brakes and say ‘Hey, now’s not the time.’ But he’s doing a great job, he’s picking up the offense well. The times that he’s working with Trevor [Lawrence], they’re on the same page, they’re connecting. Those are good things to see.”
Ridley wrote in a letter earlier this offseason that he played most of the 2020 season with a broken foot and that he was still struggling with the recovery from surgery when the 2021 season began. The receiver then stepped away from the game to focus on his mental health and was eventually suspended for all of 2022 for gambling on NFL games.
Now the receiver is set to return to the field and play an NFL game for the first time since Week 7 of the 2021 season.
Ridley, 28, has high hopes for his first year with the Jaguars, writing in March that he’s “giving Jacksonville 1,400 yards a season, period.”
