Daniel Bellinger still has a little double vision from his freak eye injury in Jacksonville, which he says is normal, and there’s still no specific timeline for his return to the Giants.
“I just have to let it heal a little more. They said that the plate in here is supposed to fuse to the bone. So, let that heal up and just kind of go with how I feel and how my vision feels,” Bellinger said Thursday. “It's getting better day by day. The vision is good now, just still a little double vision but like I said, the doctor said it's normal, and they said just go how I feel and once the plate is more healed up with the bone.”
Bellinger left that game in Jacksonville after linebacker Devin Lloyd’s hand reached through his facemask and poked his eye, fracturing his orbital bone and leaving Bellinger’s eye bloodied and swollen shut, and he had surgery to put a plate into his face to fix that fracture and repair some damage to his septum as a result of what he called an “incredibly scary” play.
“When it first happened, it kept getting really puffy and it was kind of numb around the eye, so I was afraid that it was the actual eye. I was afraid at first but once I got to the hospital and the doctor looked at the eye and said the actual eye was okay. I calmed down a little bit,” he said. “I didn't know it was actually bleeding as much as it was at first. It was all numb right here, so I thought it was just sweat coming down. I didn't realize it was blood until a little bit later.”
Bellinger has said he will likely get a visor and wear one for the rest of his career to prevent anything similar from happening – and he’s 100 percent confident that the “rest of his career” can start this season.
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“Absolutely, definitely confident I can play again this season,” he said. “Just getting out there running the last couple of days felt good. Really just kind of just getting this swelling to go down completely and once the eye is level with this eye, the vision will be even better.”
Running is all he’s doing right now, and he’s planning on graduating to the weight room sometime this weekend as he ramps up. He’s “bummed” to be missing so much time in his rookie year because of the injury, but knows it was just a freak thing that happens.
“It's unfortunate. It's a one-in-a-million injury, that's how I see it, just a freak accident. Just got to come back and be stronger because of it,” Bellinger said. “Wearing a visor will help, but (Lloyd) was just going for the ball and I had the ball close to my facemask and he got in there.”
And, yes, he has spoken to Lloyd, who was remorseful, and there are no hard feelings.
“He messaged me on Instagram. Sent a nice message apologizing,” Bellinger said. “He didn't mean anything by it. I played him in college, too, and I never saw him as a dirty player. I think he's a good player and he apologized for it so it's cool.”
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