Nearly a year after the car crash that nearly took his life, Chad Jones hopes to return to football next year. Jones still has a long way to go before playing again, but he hopes that by next summer he will at least be training with his Giants teammates, resuming a career that was put on hold when he lost control of his Range Rover and slammed into a light pole. During that single-automobile crash in New Orleans -- two months after the Giants had drafted Jones in the third round -- the axle of his SUV snapped, scraping flesh off his heel and taking out "a big chunk of meat out of my thigh like it was Jell-O." Jones has undergone more than a dozen surgeries and still needs at least one more -- and perhaps a few more minor procedures -- as his leg and a peroneal nerve continue to heal. He has a metal rod through his shin, with two screws near his ankle and two screws under his kneecap. "It's never taken me six months to do anything, not one single thing," said Jones, who won national championships in football and baseball at LSU. "[But] it took me six months just to basically walk. It took me 30 minutes to take three steps when I first started rehab in the hospital. It was excruciating pain just even standing up and letting that blood flow again through my leg. "I am definitely about 70 percent better," Jones continued. "There was talk of me not even being able to walk again and now I am actually jogging. I've been through a long journey."