DJ Hayden was drafted by the Raiders with the number 12 overall pick despite having suffered from a life threatening heart injury in college. That injury was thought to not be an issue any longer but the team got a scare last week when Hayden was hospitalized. He was absent from practice and will be sitting out the rest of OTA's with an abdominal issue.
"DJ Hayden did not practice today," said Dennis Allen. "He's got an abdominal issue that's probably gonna keep him out the rest of OTA's but he should be ready to go for training camp."
Dennis Allen says the team is unsure whether the issue is directly related to Hayden's heart injury that forced him to have open heart surgery last November.
"You know, we can't rule that out, obviously, but right now I don't know exactly what the correlation is to it. But we don't anticipate it being an issue," said Allen. "He'll probably be out for the rest of the off-season and be ready to go for training camp."
"It's obviously not a good thing from a football standpoint. As a rookie, you need all the reps you can get, all the work you can get and then obviously when you combine that with Tracy (Porter) being out for really most of last week and potentially this week, we'll see, that kind of sets us back a little bit."
This is a scary situation to be certain and one that will have those who criticized the Raiders for taking a chance on Hayden cropping up saying "I told you so". Hopefully that is the worst the Raiders face in this. The alternative is the lingering issues of his heart injury are much more serious than previously anticipated.
UPDATE: Raiders spokesperson has said Hayden has been in hospital for a week after having scar tissue removed from his abdominal region. There is no timetable yet for his release from the hospital.
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