GREEN BAY — Jordy Nelson wasn't making any guarantees about being ready for the Sept. 8 regular-season opener at San Francisco, but the Green Bay Packers veteran wide receiver's mood — wise-cracking, joking, smiling — certainly came across as not being overly worried.

Asked if he has any doubt about whether his knee, which underwent a nerve-release procedure on Aug. 6, would be ready for the 49ers, Nelson replied, "We have to go to practice every day. Things could happen in practice. You never know."

While Nelson acknowledged that the issue goes back to his college days at Kansas State, he said it's come and gone over time and hasn't been bothering him for his first five NFL seasons. But it started irritating him in training camp and he and team physician Dr. Pat McKenzie decided to go ahead with the procedure, which carries a four- to six-week recovery time. From the procedure to the opener, the window is a bit less than five weeks.

"Obviously, it's not what we wanted, but we had enough time to get it done," Nelson said. Asked why he didn't do the procedure sooner, he replied; "It's happened in college and it went away. I have not been playing for it with the last six years. You guys know you can't believe everything you hear on TV. But, no, you want to avoid surgery as much as possible and that's what we tried to do. Thought we had it taken care of and then we (didn't)."

Nelson said teammate James Jones had a similar procedure during an offseason, but that McKenzie took a different approach to that procedure because Jones had more time to recover. Still, Nelson doesn't seem worried, even though he dismissed the suggestion that he might need a preseason game to be ready. Nelson also intimated that he hasn't actually run on the knee yet but has used a special treadmill the Packers have that allows players who are rehabbing to run without putting weight on the injury.

"It's felt good. We're slowly progressing still. We've been able to do different things with different stuff the trainers have in there for us to speed up the process, so it felt good. We're right on where we thought we would be," Nelson said.

"It was something I would have been able to play through if it happened in-season or something, but like I said there was enough time that we kind of took the chance that if everything went smooth we could get in and out during training camp and hopefully have a healthy 16-game season."

Jason Wilde  wrote: