Injury Breakdown: Javonte Williams - DEN

I am not drafting Javonte Williams in fantasy this year. I opened with that because I want the message to be clear. Javonte Williams tore his ACL, LCL, and PCL. That means that only one ligament was keeping his knee from being completely dislocated last year. This is not your standard knee injury, and it's something that we have to pay attention to because it's very serious.

Despite it occurring in week four last year, there's no guarantee that Williams will be ready to start this season. Even if he does return, the risk of compensatory injuries is actually heightened because of the complexity of his knee injury. A standard ACL tear, or a clean tear where only the ACL is involved, takes about nine months for a running back to recover from. When you add an LCL tear to that, the recovery jumps up to 11 months. When you add the LCL plus either the PCL or MCL, the recovery can take even longer, sometimes up to 13 months to return to form.

Now, returning and returning to production are two very different things. We actually saw this happen with JK Dobbins last year. He had a very similar multi-ligament knee injury and despite having an extra two months to recover from it, still missed the start of the year. Then he needed a second surgery in the middle of the year and ultimately only played eight games.

Now, I'm not saying that Javonte Williams will have all of these things happen to him. JK Dobbins's injury involved a lot of swelling and scar tissue that Javonte Williams may not have. I'm just laying out the risk that you take when you're drafting Javonte Williams in fantasy this year, which again, I would not do. He's on my do not draft list, and I beg you guys not to make the same mistake twice with this injury. Don't play with this. Don't draft Javonte Williams.