The Saints players were milling about on the first day of training camp, then the story came sprinting out wide and went downfield to catch a pass.
No. 13 collected the pass in stride. Flipped the ball to Marcus Maye and flexed. It was Michael Thomas, making his return to practice for the first time in more than a year.
"I’m kind of lost for words," Thomas said after practice. "I didn’t wanna come up here and get emotional or anything. But it was a blessing to get out there with the guys."
The return was a surprise, largely due to the fact that just hours earlier his coach and GM were confirming that he'd start on the Physically Unable to Perform list. Both indicated he'd be back "soon," but that now appears to be an understatement.
In defense of the comments, the decision for Thomas to return to the field wasn't made until Wednesday morning, with the star WR acing the necessary workout the team asked him to perform before clearing him. He still wasn't a full participant, skipping team drills to end the day, but it was a massive step in the right direction after losing the better part of the last two seasons to an ankle injury suffered in Week 1 of the 2020 season.
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"Mike Thomas wants to be out here," head coach Dennis Allen said. "He wants to help this team win games. And that’s his whole mindset and his whole purpose, and he’s extremely driven to be able to do that."
Thomas looked quick and didn't show any limitations working on the troublesome ankle. The surgery and setback that cost him the entirety of last season is in the rear-view, though there's still some saltiness about what went down. Thomas had some less-than-kind reviews for a reporter's "BS" stories during the ordeal, but otherwise he's back to the intense, committed receiver that paced the league with an NFL-record 149 catches a year ago.
He even went into detail for the first time publicly about what led to the surgery confusion. It boiled down to a second opinion from a doctor that led to him attempting to rehab the injury without surgery. That, of course, did not work out as planned.
"That’s pretty much how it worked," he said. "I don’t write the opinion, I just have to pick one."
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Now the biggest question remaining: Just how closely can this post-injury MT resemble the all-world MT from before the injury. The 29-year-old is confident, he says, in part because even while injured in 2020 he was putting up big numbers with Taysom Hill starting. And that's not an exaggeration, in the four games prior to his stint on IR that season he was averaging 7.5 catches and 85 yards receiving per game. He says he did that while playing "on one foot," because the injury he was fighting through was the same one that has kept him off the field. Over 17 games, that pace would still amount to 127 catches and 1,445 yards.
"It was the same injury already early on in the season, but I played on it," he said. "So I pushed through that and now I’m just happy to be trending now in the right direction and handling my business.”
Thomas will have a multitude of new elements to navigate in that endeavor. Drew Brees: retired. Sean Payton: retired. He's got a pair of new top-end pass-catching sharing the WR room with him in Jarvis Landry and Chris Olave. He's got Jameis Winston throwing him passes as the QB1 and Dennis Allen as the head coach. His feet are grounded, time to go work.
"I know how to create success in this league, repetition, just getting in a rhythm," he said. "So when one guy leaves the next one steps up, it’s still the same responsibility.”