Travis Frederick won’t know how well comeback is going until pads are on

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Cowboys center Travis Frederick is back working with his teammates in the team’s offseason program after missing all of last season when he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

Frederick said that the thought he’d never be able to play again crossed his mind after being diagnosed with the auto-immune disease, but began to feel otherwise once he started seeing progress in his treatment. That progress has him on track to return to the lineup this year, although Frederick is unsure of what kind of player he’ll be once he’s back.

Frederick had shoulder and hernia surgeries and said he’s easing into work “to make sure that everything’s healthy” before he gets to a point where he can really make sure that he’s all the way back.

“We’ll have some stuff modified in OTAs, but most of that is for the shoulder,” Frederick said, via Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “You don’t want to re-injure something while it’s coming back from the surgery. But as far as on the field, I feel good, and in the weight room in my other auxiliary lifts, I’m doing really well there as well. So for the most part, I feel really good. We won’t know until I get out there and put the pads on and take my first rep whether or not it’s going to go well.”

It will be some time before Frederick reaches that point and the hope in Dallas is that he’ll be the same player he was before his career was interrupted last summer.