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Before practice begins on Friday, the Detroit Lions will have to decide if any players should be placed on the PUP list. There are a few candidates for the PUP list this year, and safety Louis Delmas is perhaps the most notable among them. He missed all of the Lions' OTAs and their minicamp because of knee problems, which also forced him to miss time last year.
The good news is that it doesn't actually look like Delmas will end up on the PUP list, according to Lions head coach Jim Schwartz. The door isn't completely closed to that possibility, but Schwartz indicated on Thursday that the Lions don't expect Delmas to open camp on the PUP list. From the Free Press:
"Unless something comes up with the physical, I’d be surprised if we went the PUP route with him," Schwartz said. "There’s still that possibility, but we’ll just take that sort of day by day. We will have a plan for him in training camp."
The Lions' plan is basically to limit how often Delmas practices in order to keep his knees healthy. They do want Delmas to get on the field so he can "create that kind of camaraderie and synergy" with fellow safety Glover Quin, but not if it's at the expense of his health. I'd imagine we'll see Delmas on a Kyle Vanden Bosch type of practice schedule where days off are common.
In other injury news, Schwartz said that he doesn't expect anybody to be on the long-term PUP list. In other words, we shouldn't expect the players who open camp on the PUP list to be sidelined for an extended period of time.