Allen Park — After more than a year since he last appeared in a game, Detroit Lions safety Kerby Joseph will practice on Wednesday, starting a 21-day acclimation clock ahead of a potential season debut.
The signs had been on the wall that things were trending in this direction, starting with coach Dan Campbell expressing optimism a week earlier that Joseph would play this season.
Then, during Sunday’s game against the Green Bay Packers, Joseph could be seen on the sideline exuberantly celebrating some of the game’s biggest moments, including backfield mate Brian Branch intercepting a pass in his return from last year’s torn Achilles.
After the contest, in a passing conversation about those moments in the locker room, Joseph smiled and said, ‘You can tell how good my knee feels.”
That was followed by some cryptic tweets from Joseph’s briefly dormant social media account, including a short gif from “Dragon Ball Z,” showing the main character, Goku, bouncing around with a carefree smile.
A day later, Joseph posted a drawing of himself in a science fiction-style healing chamber with electrodes attached to his chest and an oxygen mask over his mouth.
Then came coach Dan Campbell’s Wednesday morning announcement.
“We’re going to start Kerby’s clock today,” Campbell said. “He’ll be running around, (we’ll) start working him in. He’s put in a lot of work. It’s been a long, hard road for Kerby. Just to be able to get back out there with the guys and run around a little bit, this will be — we’ll kind of progress him as we go, each week here, just to get him back in the flow, football and the movement, the pounding, all of it.”
This is a step, a significant one, but there are more hurdles to clear for the 2024 first-team, All-Pro.
The Lions intend to ease him in and build up the workload and stress on the injured knee that’s sidelined Joseph since Oct. 12, 2025. They’ll have three weeks to see how his body responds before they’re required to either add him to the active roster or shut him down again, for the year.
No one is thinking about the latter possibility. Today is a day for optimism, a reward for the work that it’s taken to get to this point.
“That’s why we’re where we’re at,” Campbell said. “It was always about getting to the point where we felt like we had gotten the leg strength to a point where, man, it’s equal with the other leg. That was always, hey, we’ve got to get it there, because that’s part of your shock absorbers, right? That reduces some of that stress on the knee, where we can help it, and start to work it a little bit, right?
“A couple back-to-back days, you’re doing a little more pounding,” Campbell said. “How does the knee react? Is there swelling? Is there not? Is he ready the next day? And he’s kind of passed all those tests, from what we’re doing out there. And we try to mimic as much football — but we can’t do football — but as much as we can. So now he’s passed all those tests. It’s about getting him out there and, literally, ball is in the air, it’s a handoff, him breaking from the post, and doing it over and over and over, in real explosive reps with other bodies around.
“We’re not even there yet,” Campbell said. “He’ll do some individual (drills), all that, but we will be progressing to get into that late week, early next week, and then, here we go. So, yeah, he’s checked all those boxes, and the rest is just how does he react to football, movement skills of true football, real bodies, and the intensity of it?”
Detroit already got an emotional and practical boost from Branch’s return a week ago. The idea that he could be joined by Joseph in the secondary sometime next month has felt like an unlikely dream at times this year.
“Everybody loves Kerby,” Campbell said. “He’s a good teammate, you know? He brings a ton of energy. Look, he’s been here, but, it’s like I told him, I wanted his focus to be on the rehab. Now, he would be in meetings some, he’s in team meetings, but really the priority a lot is, in the mornings, man, he’d go out there and make sure that he’s getting all that work done.
“He’s with us, but he kind of hasn’t been,” Campbell continued. “So to get him back in the fold, and be around the guys, and really be a part of it, I think that’s significant, man. I know certainly for him, but for us, too, to have the guy around, because he’s an energy bug, man. And obviously, he’s a productive player. He’s a good football player, you know? So you get those two (Joseph and Branch) to come back, I think that helps.”
Justin, the “science fiction-style healing chamber with electrodes attached to his chest and an oxygen mask over his mouth” is also a DBZ reference (Healing Machine). Understandable you may not want to assume, but it’s almost a 1:1 recreation of the show version lol.
What's wild is that this is basically the timeline JR set a long time ago.
Branch and Kerby, hopefully back after the bye.
Not too far off!