Rehabilitating Skura passes conditioning test this week
Less than seven months after suffering a season-ending knee injury, Ravens center Matt Skura passed the team’s vaunted conditioning test this week, his Charlotte, North Carolina-based athletic trainer, Jay Johnson, said Thursday.
Johnson said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun that he’s optimistic that Skura, who tore his ACL, MCL and PCL in a Week 12 win over the Los Angeles Rams, will be ready for training camp, which is scheduled to begin in late July.
The team’s conditioning test is an annual source of consternation for Ravens players. It’s believed to include six back-and-forth, 150-yard sprints, totaling 900 yards. Each heat has to be completed in 35 seconds, and players are given only a 70-second break. It takes just one failed heat to fail the test.
Ravens offensive linemen Orlando Brown Jr. and Jermaine Eluemunor and outside linebacker Shane Ray failed it before last season, and rookies like linebacker Patrick Queen and quarterback Tyler Huntley joked on Twitter this week about the test’s difficulty.
Skura, 27, started 12 games last season, and coach John Harbaugh said after the injury that he’d established himself as “one of the better centers, at least, in the National Football League, without trying even to overstate it.” Undrafted rookie Patrick Mekari stepped in at center over the season’s final month.
If Skura’s healthy enough to start, he’d settle one question along an offensive line also looking to replace All-Pro right guard Marshal Yanda, who retired this offseason.
Adams’ interest
The Ravens are one of seven teams that star New York Jets safety Jamal Adams would welcome a trade to, ESPN reported Thursday.
Adams, an All-Pro selection each of the past two seasons, has told the Jets that he wants to be traded, but according to ESPN, the team has no intention of doing so.
The former first-round pick has been vocal about his desire for a contract extension by the start of the season. Jets general manager Joe Douglas said in February that “the plan is for Jamal to be a Jet for life,” but Adams said recently on Instagram that he still hasn’t received a contract proposal and accused the team of “a lot of talk, no action.”
The Ravens have been linked to Adams over the past year, but it’s unclear whether they’d be willing or able to package an attractive enough trade offer. While Adams’ salary cap hit is just $3.5 million this season and $9.9 million in 2021, he could demand a market-setting extension at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has made teams’ financial projections difficult.
The Ravens also have been reluctant to give up top draft picks, which the Jets will likely demand, and they return Pro Bowl selection Earl Thomas III and up-and-coming starter Chuck Clark at safety.
Adams would also welcome a trade to the Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks, according to ESPN.