Jake Ryan, Other Injured Players Returning to the Practice Field After Jaguars’ Bye Week

The Jaguars will have several injured players return to practice today, including linebacker Jake Ryan. Ryan has been out with an ACL injury since the summer.

Any NFL team has the same goal during its bye week, the one-week break from the grueling 16-game schedule that is the NFL: get healthy. For the Jacksonville Jaguars, they seem to have met this goal in a big way.

The Jaguars went into the bye week with four players coming off missed games due to injuries to wide receiver Dede Westbrook (neck/shoulder), nickel cornerback D.J. Hayden (neck/shoulder), linebacker Quincy Williams (hamstring) and linebacker Leon Jacobs (hamstring). Each player is expected to practice today as Jacksonville prepares for a pivotal Week 11 road game vs. the Indianapolis Colts.

“Obviously, we are pretty much - we expect everyone to be out there practicing,” head coach Doug Marrone said Monday.

“We are healthy after the bye, which is one of the goals that you want to do. Get yourself, you know, a little bit more and get yourself ready to go and we feel that right now, we feel good about it, you know, with the players going out today.”

Along with the other players returning from injury, Jacksonville (4-5) will also have free agent linebacker Jake Ryan make his long-awaited debut on the regular season practice field after a string of ACL issues.

“Jake Ryan is on the Non-football injury list, he comes off and starts practicing so we expect him to practice today,” Marrone said. “That is good.

Ryan signed with Jacksonville this offseason after spending four seasons with the Green Bay Packers. He has a lot of experience with Jaguars’ defensive assistant Dom Capers, who led those Green Bay defenses, so it makes sense that he was brought into Jacksonville as a depth piece and a potential contributor.

Ryan has yet to take a snap for Jacksonville, however, due to injury. He tore his ACL with the Packers last August and tore the same ACL in 2013 as a University of Michigan linebacker.

While some thought Ryan would step in for a thin Jaguars’ linebacking group once he returned from injury, Marrone said in July that the fifth-year veteran suffered a “setback” during the summer, which landed him on the NFL’s non-football injury list for the first half of the 2019 regular season.

Ryan signed a two-year, $7.5 million contract with Jacksonville per Spoctrac, but the second year on the deal is a team option. Ryan is only counting for $1.25 million against the cap this season but would count for $6.25 million if his option is picked up next season.