In this week’s column, Greg Scholz looks at how ready Aaron Jones and Darren Waller will be to return within the next two weeks… and more.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick glossary of terms commonly used by Inside Injuries:

• IRC = Injury Risk Category (three designations: “Low,” “Elevated,” “High”) — the overall likelihood a player will get injured
• HPF = Health Performance Factor (Peak, Above Average, Below Average, Poor) — our metric to predict player performance
• ORT = Optimal Recovery Time — the amount of time a player needs to fully recover from an injury (not the same as how much time they will actually miss).

Q: Is there any chance Aaron Jones comes back this week? If so, is he playable? — Trevor M.

There is a good chance he plays this week, but we don’t expect him to reach Optimal Recovery (ORT) before then. If he does play, expect either a snap count or some limited production. Besides not reaching ORT, the rest of his metrics don’t look great either. His Injury Risk remains High and his Health Performance Factor is Below Average, though this could improve with full participation in Friday’s practice.

The good news for Jones is that he has an additional day of rest/ramp-up because the Packers don’t play until Monday night. Additionally, his specific injury — an MCL sprain — heals well on its own with conservative treatment. Despite healing well without much intervention, though, MCL sprains can have a pretty significant impact on players like Jones, who rely on a lot of lateral movement to be productive.

The MCL sits on the inside of the knee. Primarily, it works to keep the knee from bending too far inward. If you’re able, shift your knees to the left and right like you’re trying to avoid being tackled. Unless you went crazy with this example, you probably won’t feel much strain, but the more force you put behind the movement, the harder the MCL has to work. Now, imagine you get paid a few million dollars to not get tackled easily and you’ll quickly understand the load that the MCL can support when fully healthy. You don’t want to put that same load on the MCL if it’s not 100%.

Back to Jones, he’s not going to be 100% before Monday but he is ramping up to a point where he could be considered playable if you don’t have other options.