The mystery surrounding Kerby Joseph’s injury continues.
A knee injury that sidelined the Detroit Lions safety for the final half of the 2025 season has continued to linger and kept him off the practice field. Throughout the past few months, there has been very little clarity on what appears to be a chronic knee injury.
On Thursday, coach Dan Campbell continued to reiterate that they simply do not know what to expect from Joseph this year.
“I don’t know. I honestly do not know,” Campbell said. “I know this:
we’ve done everything we can do, and he’s done everything he can do to this point.”
Joseph has posted to social media some of those rehabilitation efforts, including acupuncture. But the Lions are intentionally putting off any sort of on-field work. And Campbell says once he finally takes the field, that’s when they’ll have a better idea on how Joseph’s knee will hold up.
“We are trying to be as smart as we can and not push this until we absolutely have to, because once we’ve done that, then we’ll know one way or another,” Campbell said. “And it’s not worth it right now. We’re just slowly building, continuing to strengthen there. He’s getting treatment; he’s done some of these different things in different places to try and help. So I feel good about that. I feel good about that we’ve done everything we can and so has he. So we won’t know. Honestly, we probably won’t know until we get into the thick of training camp.”
It may not be the positive update Lions fans were hoping for, but it at least shows that both the team and Joseph himself are exploring every possible avenue to get him on the field, and have him healthy enough to stay there.
In the meantime, the Lions did the best they could to fortify the safety room this offseason to ensure they’re covered while both Joseph and Brian Branch (torn Achilles) work their way back from injury. They added Christian Izien and Chuck Clark in free agency, and re-signed veteran Avonte Maddox.
“I like Izien a lot. We played against him. He’s a pretty headsy player. He’s pretty violent. See ball, hit ball,” Campbell said. “He hasn’t done a ton on the backend with depth, so those are things we’re working through. But I feel like those are things he can do. But there again, we won’t know until we get into it in real time. But I know he’s got some football player to him.
“I really like that group. I really like that group. You talk about going into training camp, Chuck Clark, Maddox, Izzy, there’s a ton of guys back there that’ll be competing. We’ve got (Thomas) Harper back, Dan Jackson is coming off injury, Strick-nine (Loren Strickland) is there. So it’s a pretty competitive group, with some young players and then with some heady veteran guys.”
