Joel Dreessen has said that he is "on the right track" as he continues to recover from a knee injury.
The Denver Broncos tight end missed minicamp in June while recovering from knee surgery, before sustaining a separate injury during training camp that has kept him off the field so far this season.
The 31-year-old told the team's official website: "For me to miss that time was pretty painful. I know people in this world go through a lot more troublesome things than that, but for an athlete, a competitor, to miss practice and games like that, that hurt. It's been tough, but we're on the right track now.
"Unfortunately, the second operation, it was a totally new injury. It was just completely bad luck. It was one of those things where I was really discouraged, just because I was looking forward to having a second year in the same offense and really working on getting better with the fine details of the offense.
"It was really hard. I went eight years without hardly missing a practice and then all of the sudden I had to sit out six weeks of training camp and the first couple weeks of the season."
Dreessen practised in full pads this week for the first time since undergoing a second knee operation in August.
