Raiders' Joseph Has Been Learning, Waiting to Heal

Safety, team's No. 1 draft pick, should be ready to full participate in training camp in July

As the Raiders head toward next month’s training camp, they have very few injured players.

During the recently completed three-day minicamp, just a handful of players were unable to participate, including tight end Clive Walford, running back Roy Helu Jr. and safety Reggie Nelson. Each is expected to be ready by training camp.

Another player the Raiders are eager to see is first-round draft choice Karl Joseph.

Joseph, a safety from West Virginia, is in the latter stages of rehabilitation from surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament that cut short his final college season.

The Raiders knew when they drafted Joseph that he wouldn’t be able to fully partcipate in the offseason program because of his knee. But all along, he’s been on target to be on the field on Day 1 of training camp.

“The knee’s feeling good, I’ve just got to keep strengthening it and getting ready,” he said at the time he was drafted.

Head coach Jack Del Rio, meanwhile, says Joseph has been diligent to learn as much as possible and shouldn’t be behind.

“We’ve made the most of the situation,” Del Rio told Jimmy Durkin of the Bay Area News Group on the final day of minicamp. “Ideally, he’s doing everything. Short of that, what we can do is we can do the walkthroughs, we can do the meetings, we can spend extra time with him. So those are the things that we’ve been doing and we’ll continue to do.”

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