Miles Burris, Jared Veldheer not ready to return

Raiders second year linebacker Miles Burris had surgery last January on his knee. At one time the thinking was he would be back for training camp. Then training camp came and went with Burris still on the sideline. Then the regular season arrived and Burris was still not ready.

With his not participating in training camp and preseason it allowed the team to place him on the physically unable to perform list. Placing a player on the PUP list means they are eligible to play after week six of the season.

That means if Burris were on schedule, he would join the team when they return to practice after the bye week. But according to Dennis Allen, the outlook on that return is not good. Same goes for Jared Vekdheer who will be eligible to come off partial season IR a week later.

"I don't think either one of them is ready yet." Said Allen. "the plan is for Jared obviously when he's healed then we begin to get him into football related activities. And really Miles, it's really a matter of putting a few days back to back and being able to come out with any type of soreness or anything like that. So, we're getting close with both of those players. I don't think we're there yet and we won't do anything to acclimate those two guys until we feel they're confident that they're ready to go."

With Veldheer still a couple weeks out, him not being ready to return yet is not a huge deal. His timetable from the surgery on his triceps was always going to be right around the time he was eligible to return. Granted, the team would very much like to have him back as soon as possible.

For Burris, the situation is far more worrisome. His recovery time from his surgery has now reached nine months. It doesn't look like he'll be ready by next week when he is eligible to return. The team will have a few weeks after that before they have to make a decision on him at which point they must activate him or place him on injured reserve.

Ironically, the same thing happened to Aaron Curry last season and it is the reason why Burris was a starter his entire rookie season. Curry had a surgery on his knee that wasn't healing properly and was put on the PUP list. They stretched out his return the allotted three extra weeks before activating him for two games. He played mostly on special teams before being released.

The status of Burris and Veldheer will be one to watch over the next few weeks.

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