Dominique Easley's former trainer expects him to be ready for training camp
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| Easley's former rehab trainer doesn't expect him to miss any time this season |
“I would think his knees now are stronger than they’ve ever been. As far as this year and being available for the Patriots, I do not see him not being ready for the Patriots full-go when training camp opens in August.”
That would be a speedy recovery, but it matches up with the precedent set by Easley's previous ACL tear. In 2011, Easley tore his left ACL in the team's regular season finale. Their bowl game was the only game he missed from the injury, as Easley was back on the field at the start of the following season. Given that Easley's current ACL injury occurred in late September, it wouldn't be a major surprise to see him cleared by August.
Of course, such a speedy recovery would not be possible without intense rehab, where Easley has been a marvel. In fact, according Villani, Easley attacked his rehab with such ferocity that the trainer sometimes had to trick him into slowing down.
There were moments when they met inside the gym with the premise that they’d work on his knee only for Villani to pull a bait and switch, putting him through a grueling upper body workout.
The goal, he said, was to bring Easley on the verge of throwing up so he wouldn’t want to work the lower body. Another time, he set up a massage for the 6-foot-2, 288-pounder, knowing he’d be so relaxed and tired afterward that he wouldn’t want to work out.
“He’s a very hard worker,” Villani said. “One of the main things we had to do to ensure he was going to get good results. We actually had to slow him down on how much he wanted to train on the knee. That was one of our hardest things to do with him.
A lot of the stuff we did — December, January, February and March — I called it ‘Dominique trickery.’"
Villani estimates that Easley is about two months away from being fully recovered, adding that his knee was at about "85%" at Florida's Pro Day in March. This comes thanks not only to the work of Villani, but also Ivan Candelaria, who trained Easley when the Staten Island native was developing into the second ranked defensive prospect in the country. Easley has continued his rehab with Candelaria when out of the state of Florida.
In addition to his rehab sessions, Easley has been consulting with Dr. James Andrews, who performed both of his knee surgeries. According to Candelaria, the Patriots checked in with both Dr. Andrews and himself about Easley's progression in his rehab.
“I think [the Patriots] see Dom as a safe pick because they’ve done the research on his injury. They’ve asked me. They’ve asked Dr. Andrews about his knee and he has a healthy knee.
The thing with Dom is, when he tore his ACL the first time, I don’t think he was sure what it was all about. When it was the second time, it didn’t faze him at all. He was like that because his performance level was the same if not better after the [first] ACL tear.”
