GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft is coming off the physically unable to perform list as he continues his comeback from a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
The move clears Kraft to return to practice, though Packers coach Matt LaFleur said the 2023 third-round draft pick wouldn’t be participating in team drills for now.
“We’re just going to kind of get him back ingrained into the process and into individual,” LaFleur said
before the Packers’ practice Friday. “What’s great is when they do come off PUP, then now he can partake in some of the walk-through periods, especially that we do in the evenings, just to get him back hearing the call, lining up and then just going through that.”
Kraft caught 32 passes for 489 yards and six touchdowns in eight games last season before tearing his right ACL on Nov. 2 during a 16-13 loss to the Carolina Panthers. The week before his injury, Kraft caught seven passes for 143 yards and two touchdowns in a 35-25 victory at Pittsburgh.
Kraft said during Green Bay's mandatory minicamp in June that he expected to be ready for the Sept. 13 season opener at Minnesota and that he believed he was playing as well as any tight end in the NFL at the time of his injury.
This isn’t the first time Kraft opened a training camp on the PUP list. It also happened in 2024 after he tore a pectoral muscle that May.
“I was on the PUP for the start of a training camp going into the 2024 season, so came off the PUP and I played a full year completely healthy,” Kraft said Wednesday. “So that that’s the goal this time, is when I come off the PUP, there’s, you know, obviously some guardrails for me there initially as far as some activations, getting acclimated to the team reps and things like that, but playing the rest of the year fully healthy.”
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