METAIRIE, L. a.. — Michael Thomas is hanging on a health facility.

It’s a Thursday afternoon within the Brandnew Orleans Saints coaching facility, neatly future the canine days of coaching camp and into the portion of the summer season the place weary gamers are counting unwell the times till the steady season.

Saints quarterback Derek Carr has made up our minds the 30-year-old wideout is the time’s favourite goal. He sends 3 passes Thomas’ method to get started off 7-on-7 drills, nearest communicates with him downfield at the first move of 11-on-11 paintings.

Carr assists in keeping at it, completing off with two instantly connections to Thomas within the two-minute drill. Thomas makes catch upcoming and catch, and by way of the tip of the time, he has 10 receptions.

“Mike’s looked better and better every time he’s come out here,” Saints lecturer Dennis Allen stated that afternoon. ” … We kind of knew that at some point we’d start seeing what we kind of expect out of him, and I think we’re seeing that more and more every day he’s out here.”

It’s the maximum Thomas has stuck all all through coaching camp.

It’s the maximum Thomas has stuck in years.

Because the Saints way their first regular-season sport in opposition to the Tennessee Titans on Sept. 10 (1 p.m. ET, CBS), the similar query lingers each and every time: Can Thomas be the participant he impaired to be? The person who began his occupation in 2016 by way of posting 4 1,000-plus backyard receiving seasons.

Regardless of the reviews of guarantee or suspicion, there are not any absolutes in soccer. There may be simplest hope.

---

THERE HAVE BEEN moments in observe the place it could were simple to take a look at Thomas and film the more youthful model of himself — the bolder, brasher model who as soon as concealed a turn telephone within the objective posts to pay homage to former Saint Joe Horn’s well-known landing party to spotlight one in all his personal.

Former Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who performed with Thomas from 2016 to 2020, attended joint practices in Los Angeles in opposition to the Chargers in Era 2 of the preseason. Brees, who has been retired since 2021, was once requested whether or not he’d nonetheless like to pick out up the ball and throw to a couple of his aging guys, and his solution was once nearly wistful.

“It’s hard not to sit there and look at [running back Alvin] Kamara, [tight end] Jimmy [Graham] and Mike T, and say, ‘These three guys, right?’ The moments that I had with them, if you could just bottle that up right? That was pretty special,” Brees advised the legitimate Saints podcast.

For the ones first 3 years, Brees and Thomas managed many of the Saints’ offense.

Thomas stuck 26.9% of the workforce’s passes in 2017, 32.8% in 2018 and 35.6% in 2019 — a shocking flip of occasions for an offense that had by no means featured one participant so prominently.

Brees by no means had a participant he going to so constantly all the way through his years with former lecturer Sean Payton. Their offense depended on spreading the ball round to everybody. The participant that got here closest to Thomas was once operating again Reggie Bush, who stuck 23.6% of the workforce’s passes in 2006.

Earlier than that, there was once Horn himself, who was once catching 30% of the passes in seasons with considerably fewer makes an attempt.

However Payton had a sense about their 2016 second-round pick of Ohio Shape, and the Saints didn’t hesitate to position their accept as true with in him.

“Prior to his injuries, he was durable, available,” Payton recalled to ESPN. “Each week he’d get his body ready to play, and he was one of those physical [receivers], like, you felt him. I went out one day on third-down day to just go out and play around in press [coverage]. He kind of released off me and I swear, I had like one finger going in a different direction. I had a bruise on my chest. You felt like you were in a car accident.”

Thomas rewarded that trust by way of catching the entirety. He stuck 85% of his objectives in 2018 and 80.5% in 2019, the best percentages of any wideout with a minimum of 100 receptions in a season since a minimum of 1992, consistent with Professional Soccer Reference.

Thomas averaged 1,378 receiving yards in his first 4 seasons, earned two first-team All-Professional nods, led the league in receptions two times and unpriviledged Marvin Harrison’s 17-year-old catch report with 149 in 2019.

He overlooked one sport all the way through that span and didn’t seem to have met his ceiling but.

When Thomas signed a report environment five-year, $100 million commitment extension six weeks earlier than the 2020 season, there was once refuse query the Saints have been doing the suitable factor.

However nearest the base dropped out within the season-opener.

Thomas was once blockading all the way through a run play games with 2:19 left in an eventual 34-23 win in opposition to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Working again Latavius Murray was once tackled into him when Thomas was once grew to become the alternative method. Murray crash the again of Thomas’ knee as his left bedrock was once planting into the farmland. His leg gave method right away, and Thomas crashed to the turf earlier than getting up and limping off.

Thomas overlooked six video games with a left ankle shock, performed in six extra and sat out the residue of the steady season earlier than returning for the Saints’ two playoff video games.

Thomas tried to heal his ankle via remains and rehab upcoming the season, nevertheless it was once ultimately progressive he wanted surgical operation in June 2021 to fix a torn deltoid and ligaments in his ankle. He had a setback halfway during the 2021 season and overlooked all of the season. Saints quarterbacks lecturer Ronald Curry, who was once Thomas’ extensive receivers lecturer from 2018 to 2020, stated Thomas had a response to the {hardware} installed his ankle all the way through surgical operation, and it wouldn’t be the ultimate occasion.

“He had surgery and then the metal that they put in his leg had a reaction that caused the stress reaction,” Curry stated. “Then you’ve got to take that out and redo it. So it’s not like he had this one injury and he was done. He had this one injury, then he had another injury, and he was told, ‘If you rest, it will heal.’ So he rests, and it doesn’t heal, so then people ask why he didn’t have surgery? Well because they told him if he rested it, it would heal. And it didn’t. Everybody reacts a little bit different.

“He did not anything fallacious, his frame simply didn’t react to the surgical procedures adore it must have.”

Thomas came back the following season to catch three touchdowns in the first two games of 2022 before leaving with toe injury in the fourth quarter of a loss to the Carolina Panthers in Week 3. Thomas walked off on his own accord, and the injury was initially overshadowed after starting quarterback Jameis Winston was also sidelined with back and foot issues. Neither of them played another game in 2022.

Despite the injury occurring in September, Thomas was not placed on injured reserve until November, with the team hoping he could return in a month. But the injury, a dislocated second toe on his right foot, did not respond the way he and the team hoped.

“Mike had a turf toe on 10,” wide receiver Tre’Quan Smith said. “I had turf toe, and that’s nowhere akin what Mike had, and it was once bothering me such a lot … It bugged me all season. Simply consider what Mike went via.”

Thomas had surgery to repair his toe after going on injured reserve but similar issues would arise. His body did not respond well to the hardware inserted, once again slowing the healing process.

“Whilst you get surgical procedures and so they put {hardware} in, occasionally your frame rejects the {hardware},” Thomas told ESPN.

He added: “Your frame responds and recovery responds to it. No matter, I assumption is, the 1%? I assumption I’m in that section.”

---

THE 2023 VERSION of Thomas has been stitched up and put back together many times over. The hardware in his toe is now out and the rehab process is behind him.

He is not the same player he was three years ago, and the Saints are no longer the same team. Time has moved on, but Thomas’ fire hasn’t gone anywhere.

“I really like the sport, surely love taking part in it greater than gazing it,” Thomas said. “I’ve grown a greater, deeper love for the sport, evidently. However I felt like upcoming the primary shock, I used to be development that very same form of starvation too. Now it’s simply rolling much more. … I’m taking part in the chance to return out right here and compete, and I don’t remove it without any consideration in any respect.”

Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, who restructured Thomas’ contract in March to ensure he stayed in New Orleans, said in May he “completely” believes Thomas can still be a 100-catch type of player.

“We’ve simply were given to get him wholesome,” Loomis said. “He’s labored so withered at that over the ultimate two or 3 years. The consequences haven’t been as just right as we had all was hoping, nevertheless it’s now not as a result of a rarity of aim or want by way of him, that’s evidently.”

But that won’t be easy. Only 20 wide receivers in NFL history have caught at least 100 passes in a season after turning 30, but very few of them have done it after several major injuries.

Julian Edelman caught 100 passes at age 33 after major injuries when he was 29 and 31. Andre Johnson caught 112 passes at 31 after a hamstring injury when he was 30. Hall of Fame wideout Jerry Rice suffered serious knee injuries when he was 35, but played seven more seasons after that, returning the next year to catch 82 passes and make the Pro Bowl.

“It’s now not like he’s moving to get up each and every time and be at liberty,” wide receivers coach Kodi Burns said. “He’s were given to determine a method to get again on govern. You’re moving to have some ups and downs. It’s moving to be tricky. However in the long run you knew what it took to get to that time.”

The Saints knew they had to be realistic. They took Chris Olave with the No. 11 pick in the 2022 draft, and they’ve made a concerted effort to get Kamara back in the passing game. They also have a plan to involve undrafted wide receiver Rashid Shaheed more in his second season.

“Confidently our talent guys simply proceed to grasp, one man could have 10 catches in a sport and you will have two,” Carr, who signed with the team on a four-year deal worth up to $150 million in March, said after the first preseason game. “And that can occur for 2 weeks, and increase, you’re gonna have 12. Now we have so that you can play games that method and play games selflessly, and I imagine we’ve got a bunch that may do this. … Confidently our guys take into account that’s simply how we’re moving to must play games if we wish to do the issues we wish to do.”

The Saints were caught flat-footed in 2021 in Thomas’ absence, and the passing game struggled in his absence in what would also be its first without Brees since his arrival in 2006.

“His comeback tale goes to be particular,” Curry said in July. “He’s were given a QB that’s moving to get him the ball, and he’s were given alternative guys round him, not like a few years in the past. I assumed we had just right skill, however we inclined on Mike, like, a batch. I don’t suppose we’re going to try this this yr.”

---

PAYTON WEIGHED IN on Thomas despite being removed from the situation since retiring after the 2021 season, saying his Thomas’ work ethic gives him the ability to be the player he once was.

“I don’t have any suspicion that if he’s wholesome he will also be [one of the top receivers in the league],” said Payton, now the coach of the Denver Broncos. “The query is, ‘What sort of toll has the shock had?’ However I believe he’s the kind, this season, as an example — his first complete season again — you’re gonna see an ascension in his play games because the season is going on, now not the alternative method round, as a result of he’s again within the offense, brandnew quarterback, and I believe you’ll see increasingly more of that.”

Thomas and the Saints know the way briefly issues can progress sideways, so they’re wary now.

“He’s still getting there, still getting back,” stated Saints cornerback Marshon Lattimore, who steadily is going up in opposition to Thomas in observe.

Curry wasn’t in a position to construct any proclamations when requested about Thomas in July.

“I wasn’t going to stamp something I hadn’t seen,” he stated.

Obviously, that was once not the case heading into the season.

“The comeback is real,” he stated with a grin.

Allen performed his inauguration offense in Recreation 1 of the preseason. Thomas had one catch for 16 yards in his lone pressure — the place he performed 12 snaps.

“The ball is going to be spread around,” Curry stated. “So, if you’re looking for him to get 142 catches, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean he’s not that same player. He’s not going to get 180 targets.”

It’s been nearly 1,100 days for the reason that opener in 2020 the place Thomas suffered his first setback, however it doesn’t matter what model of Thomas the Saints get, Allen and the workforce are assured in no matter he has left to present.

“[Recovery] just takes a little bit of time,” Allen advised ESPN forward in their moment preseason sport, “and I’ve got zero concerns about Mike Thomas. And he showed it in the game the other day. When the lights came on in the game, he made a play. And I expect the same thing throughout the season.”

ESPN senior scribbler Seth Wickersham contributed to this file.