Kadarius Toney will be activated off the reserve/COVID list Tuesday, the same day the full Giants squad reported for the start of training camp.
But the rookie receiver will not hit the field Wednesday when head coach Joe Judge puts his team through the first practice of camp.
Toney, the first round pick from Florida, tested positive for COVID-19 when he arrived Thursday to his first NFL training camp along with the other rookies. Toney was able to attend meetings remotely and had to self-isolate.
“He’s with us today in the building, so he’s back with us,’’ Judge said. “We have a number of guys for different reasons that we’re actually going to take ‘em a little bit slower. We’ve obviously coming off of that protocol as we learned last year with a number of our players on our team throughout the season. We’re going to go ahead and move him around the field and make sure that when he’s ready to go, then we’ll start integrating him with our team.
“But we’re not going to go ahead and rush anything to get in the process. He’ll be in all the meetings with all of our players, he’ll be able to go out there and operate in some of the meetings to get a little bit more on our feet, but in terms of practice itself, we’re not going to do anything with him on the field with the team until we know he’s fully ready to go.’’
This means Toney will miss at least a few days of practice until the Giants are certain there are no lingering symptoms or medical issues. The Giants last season had to put players on the COVID list several times, and watching and evaluating how they came through the virus helped formulate a more informed plan this time around.
“His timetable will be different I’m sure than a lot of the guys last year that we learned from,’’ Judge said. “One of the things we really took away from last year was these things are all very specific to each person, what their individual symptoms were, what their exposure was but that time away from training is what’s critical.’’
After missing out on Alabama wide receiver DeVonta Smith with the No. 11 pick in the NFL Draft, the Giants opted to trade down with the Bears, dropping to No. 20 to secure Toney.
All players scheduled to report to camp on Tuesday did so.
