He's back. After officially ending his 38-day holdout on Sunday, Jaguars RB Maurice Jones-Drew returned to the practice field Monday preparing for the opener against the Vikings.
Coach Mike Mularkey said Jones-Drew, the franchise's all-time leading rusher, will play on Sunday, but he won't start. That honor goes to Rashad Jennings, who had a strong preseason as the team's starting RB with MJD out of the fold for all of training camp.
“Wednesday will be a good measure of where (Jones-Drew) is in pads,” Mularkey told the team's official website. “Wednesday practices are long and pretty physical.”
An exact plan of how the carries will be split hasn't been determined, but Mularkey made it clear that Jennings will carry a heavier load, indicating that Jones-Drew would be used to spell Jennings when he is tired.
MJD, who was the league's leading rusher in 2011 with 1,606 yards, said he doesn't expect many negative effects from him missing more than five weeks of practice.
“I’m feeling fine,” he told the team's official website. “It felt great to get out there and run around with the guys and get hit a little bit. It’s kind of good to get my legs back underneath me and get ready to roll.”
Tight end moves: It's not a surprise that the Jaguars have made transactions at TE after only keeping two healthy ones -- Marcedes Lewis and Zach Potter -- on the initial 53-man roster. The team has waived TE Zach Miller, who dealt with multiple injuries in the preseason, and claimed TE Brett Brackett, who had recently been waived by the Philadelphia Eagles.
Brackett, a 6-foot-5, 250-pound, undrafted free agent in 2011 out of Penn State, has bounced around practice squads and preseason rosters of the Miami Dolphins and the Jaguars. He had 56 receptions for 714 yards and seven touchdowns in his career at Penn State.
Practice squad completed: Here's a list of the players the Jaguars officially added to the practice squad over the weekend:
OL Daniel Baldridge (3rd year, undrafted in 2010, Marshall), WR Mike Brown (rookie, undrafted, Liberty), DE Ryan Davis (rookie, undrafted, Bethune-Cookman), CB Antonio Dennard (rookie, undrafted, Langston), G D.J. Hall (rookie, undrafted, Texas State), LB Joshua Jones (rookie, undrafted, Elon), FB Will Ta'ufo'ou (4th year, undrafted in 2009, California), QB John Parker Wilson (4th year, undrafted in 2009, Alabama).
Every player, with the exception of Wilson, was on the team's roster during training camp.
For more Jaguars news and analysis, follow Daniel Lewis @CBSSportsNFLJAC.