Giants Safety Xavier McKinney Provides Update on His Hand

Giants safety Xavier McKinney delivered a positive report on his ongoing rehab to heal his broken left hand.

At the end of last season, New York Giants safety Xavier McKinney said he planned to spend as much time in East Rutherford to continue working on rehabbing his left hand, injured during a bye week ATV accident.

Keeping to his word, the fourth-year safety delivered a positive update when asked about his progress.

"Yeah, the hand is good to go," McKinney told reporters Monday during a video conference call. "After a tremendous amount of work and rehab that I've been doing with the training staff and doing other outside things to be able to rehab it, it's good. So just really looking forward and be ready to start this year."

McKinney's freak accident, which happened while he was on a trip to Mexico, resulted in his missing the final eight games of last season. When he did return to the lineup after having the pins removed from his surgically repaired hand, he wore a protective splint for the Giants' brief playoff run.

McKinney, who insisted that he was "a hundred percent," insisted that the splint wasn't any kind of a hindrance to him last year after he returned to action.

"Yeah, that, that wasn't that wasn't a thing," he said about the splint. "It wasn't hindering at all to me. You guys saw the games that I played with the cast, and I was still able to make a huge impact on the games. If you turn on the film, you see that, so I didn't see any hindrance."

McKinney is at an interesting point in his career. He's about to enter the final year of his rookie deal, and to prepare for that and his next contract, he switched agents. But unlike teammate Dexter Lawrence, McKinney said he never thought about potentially sitting out the start of the off-season program.

"I'm just focused on what I'm doing right now," McKinney said. "That's my biggest thing. I like to stand in the present with things, so that is kind of my mindset right now. It's just to get better personally, but also help my team in whichever way I can.

"That's pretty much how I've always been, and that's how I continue to be, regardless of anything else that's happened on the outside," he added.

McKinney's decision to be at the voluntary program could be traced to two things. First, the Giants did right by him last year after his injury, which landed him on the non-football injury report. Had the Giants wanted to, they could have docked McKinney pay, but they decided against that, a move that the safety recognized no doubt as a goodwill gesture.

The other likely reason behind his decision to attend the off-season program, besides looking to get better at his craft, is to continue rehabbing his hand to where when discussions come up about whether he'll need to continue wearing some sort of protective apparatus, the decision will be made against it.

"I don't think so," he said when asked if he would have to continue wearing a cast or splint on his hand. "We'll see how it goes, but I don't think I should."

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