Colts reveal that Clayton Geathers underwent offseason neck surgery

The Indianapolis Colts today revealed that safety Clayton Geathers underwent surgery on his neck earlier this offseason.

He suffered the injury in December last year and it led to him being placed on injured reserve, and as reporters began to get suspicious about his lack of availability this offseason the Colts released this update.

The Colts said that Geathers has been present during the offseason workout program but hasn’t been participating, as instead he has been rehabbing with the trainers.

“Clayton has been at our facility every day during the offseason program rehabbing with our training staff,” head coach Chuck Pagano said in a statement released by the team. “We have a plan for his recovery and look forward to him fully healing and returning to the field.”

The details on this aren’t clear, however, as we don’t know what type of surgery it was, when he underwent the surgery, and what the timeline is for his recovery. Without those pieces of information, it’s impossible to tell whether Geathers will miss any time this season or not.

Neck injuries are always concerning, and that was the case when Geathers originally suffered the injury in the team’s week eleven game last year. We hadn’t gotten an update on him since then, which was strange, and it turns out that the injury was significant enough to warrant surgery.

Geathers figures to be an important part of the Colts’ secondary if/when he’s healthy, as he currently projects to be the starting safety alongside rookie Malik Hooker. The Colts also like to be able to utilize Geathers’ versatility and play him down in the box some too, which adds to his value. If he does have to miss time the Colts have players capable of handling it, as Hooker and Darius Butler would likely start with T.J. Green seeing more reps too, but it’s obviously not ideal. Geathers is one of the better players on the defense, so the Colts obviously hope to have him back to full health as soon as possible. A neck injury isn’t anything to mess with, however, so they’ll likely ease him back slowly - whenever it is that he’ll be back.