I've posted on this subject in the Injury thread. but to comment again specifically to his return. His return will depend on how extensive the disk affected his nerve(s) and which and how much atrophy of the muscles being fed by these nerves (buttocks, hamstrings, quads, calves?????) has occurred since he played with it for so long. Besides this, everyone tend to minimize spinal surgeries performed through "minimally invasive incisions." It's not so much how long the surgical scar is, it's more what structures are you having to cut through..........and the most important structures are the back muscles. In you or me, or even Arian Foster, these may be 1/2 to 1 inch thickness. In someone built like JJ, this could be 2 1/2 inches or more. As these back muscles (an important part of the core, which JJ has already been dealing with having undergone bilateral sports hernias) are stressed to the max when exercising, especially when twisting bending and turning which is a constant with a DE, pain and reflex spasm is easily triggered and will lead to trying to compensate for movements that cannot comfortably be performed................leading to those dreaded compensatory injuries to the lower limbs. All of these bad things are much more likely if a player pushes himself or is pushed back onto the field before he is ready. JJ may try to play early, but because of the aforementioned his is not likely to look like JJ until well into the second half of the season.......if he doesn't injure himself. As I've posted in the past, with his recent cumulative core injuries, there is a possibility that we never see the same JJ we have come to always heavily depend on to carry the D.