Giants' Sterling Shepard catches touchdown in return from torn Achilles
New York Giants wide receiver Sterling Shepard (3) celebrates after his touchdown reception during the second half of an NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022, in Nashville. Credit: AP/Mark Zaleski
NASHVILLE — There were not a lot of people who thought Sterling Shepard would be back from his torn Achilles tendon in time for the 2022 regular-season opener.
Shepard was one who did.
“I never thought otherwise,” the wide receiver said leading up to Sunday’s 21-20 win over the Titans. “I worked my tail off for it. Nothing was given to me, but I knew that if I wanted to come back and I wanted to be ready for Week 1, I was going to have to do that, and it was a long process. But I put my head down and fell in love with the process and was grinding every day to try to do something to get better every day.”
So there he was, nine months after being carted off the field at MetLife Stadium, lining up at wide receiver and catching a 65-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter on Sunday to bring the Giants within an extra point at 13-12. Shepard had two receptions for 71 yards.
Shepard said he had one thought when he beat his man on the touchdown: “It’s over with, man.”
“I was not going to be denied on that one,” he said. “It was a long time coming, a long road for me. There were some dark times throughout the time I was recovering.”
He began training camp on PUP and did not appear in any preseason games or the team’s joint practice against the Jets. None of that mattered, though, because he wasn’t rehabbing to return for those events.
He was doing it for Sunday. And the next one and the one after that.
Shepard hasn’t played a full slate of games since 2018 and has appeared in only 29 of the Giants’ 49 contests since. He played a full 16-game season only twice in his first six years, and in the last three seasons, he has played 10, 12 and a career-low seven games.
“It’s a brutal sport that we play,” he said. “I do everything in my power to stay healthy and stay on the field. Some things are just out of your control. There’s nothing that I can do about my Achilles . . . It’s just freak stuff that happens from time to time, and some guys are more fortunate than others.”
Shepard said his long history of injuries will not change his approach on the field.
“I’m going to play my game,” he said. “I’m going to do what I always do. I’m going to go out there and play real hard, with passion, and however the chips may fall is where they fall. But I’m going to do me.”
Shepard is as close to living history as these Giants get. He is the last vestige of a time when the Giants were contenders, not only at the end of their season but the beginning. Heading into Sunday, he was the only player on the roster who had ever won an opening-day game with the team. That victory, a 20-19 win over the Cowboys in Dallas, came exactly six years before Sunday’s opener.
That victory kicked off a season that ended with 11 victories and a playoff berth.
There are not many who think these Giants will be able to return there. But as was the case with the accelerated timeline for his return from the Achilles injury, Shepard is a believer.
“That’s the objective,” he said of 2022. “That’s the reason we all play this game, and I am the only one who’s been to the playoffs with this team. That’s something I want all my teammates to experience, because there’s no place like winning in New York. I mean, New York is the place to do it.”
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.
