Giants rookie Kayvon Thibodeaux could miss opener but won't need surgery

Kayvon Thibodeaux left MetLife Stadium on Sunday night confident that he would not miss much playing time because of the knee injury he suffered in the second quarter of the preseason win over the Bengals.

“I’m good,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

An MRI on Monday morning proved him right.

Thibodeaux suffered a sprained MCL, the team announced. His ACL remained intact and his meniscus was unharmed, meaning he will not require any surgery to repair damage from the hit that left him sprawled on the field clutching his knee in a scary scene for the team.

The collective exhale from the organization swept across the Meadowlands like the December winds.

Now the race begins to see if the prized first-round pick can make it back in time for the start of the regular season. While no two injuries are alike and all athletes recover at different rates, sprained MCLs typically require three to four weeks to heal. The Giants will open the season at Tennessee on Sept. 11, exactly three weeks from the day Thibodeaux suffered the injury. It will be tight.

“I’d say it’s day to day,” coach Brian Daboll said Monday of Thibodeaux’s timeline. “I’m not forecasting when a player can come back or not come back. I know he’ll come in and get treatment, he’ll take it day by day, and when he is ready to go out there, that’s when we’ll put him out there.’’

Given how valuable he is to the team, the Giants are unlikely to rush Thibodeaux back for that Week 1 game if he is not completely ready to play. He was selected with the fifth overall pick in April’s draft and is a cornerstone of the defensive schemes.

Their Week 2 game, which would be four weeks from the day of the injury, is the home opener against the Panthers. In Week 3, the Giants will host the Cowboys on a Monday night. Barring a setback, Thibodeaux almost certainly should be back for that important divisional game.

“Fingers crossed,” Daboll said. “Hopefully his rehab goes well and he can get out there as soon as he can.”

The Giants have some options to get them through any length of time they will be without Thibodeaux. Jihad Ward has been injured himself but is close to returning, and Daboll said he has seen good things from Quincy Roche in practice. Oshane Ximines also is in the rotation and Daboll mentioned Tamon Fox as having “a really good night” against the Bengals.

Perhaps the biggest player the Giants will need to step up is Azeez Ojulari, who just returned from an offseason hamstring injury himself and made his preseason debut on Sunday.

“It was good to have Azeez back,” Daboll said. “He had 10 reps, caused two holding penalties. He looked good out there for the first time.”

This won’t be Thibodeaux’s first time rehabbing an injury with the Giants. In the spring, he was a spectator for most of the OTAs and minicamps while working through a lower-body injury. Back then, the aim was to have him ready for the start of training camp in a few months; this recovery is a little more urgent and will be measured in weeks.

It also ends his rookie preseason. Thibodeaux obviously will miss a number of practices in the coming weeks along with the joint workout with the Jets on Thursday and the preseason finale against the Jets on Sunday.

The next time he plays, it will be for real.

“As many repetitions as any of our guys can get, whether it’s a rookie or a veteran, I think it helps them and it helps each unit,” Daboll said. “KT has been doing everything we have asked him to do since he’s been here, been a good teammate, worked extremely hard.

“Certainly you never want to miss time, but he has the right attitude and the right approach. He’ll rehab as hard as he can rehab and be ready to go when he is ready to go.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.