BEDMINSTER — While Paul James has been injury-plagued throughout his career, the Rutgers senior running back has also proven to be a fast healer.

James, who tore the ACL in his right knee on Sept. 20, is expected to be fully cleared when Rutgers reports for training camp on Aug. 9.

"P.J. looks great," Rutgers coach Kyle Flood said Monday at his annual charity golf tournament. "We feel like he'll be 100 percent when we start training camp."

James suffered a broken fibula early in the 2013 season, but reclaimed the top running back role after missing four games. In James' absence last season, then-freshmen Josh Hicks and Robert Martin emerged.

With both young backs seeing the bulk of their action late in the season, Hicks averaged 6.4 yards per carry and Martin averaged 5.0 yards per carry. But James, who averaged 5.8 yards per carry last season and 5.6 yards per carry in 2013, is in line to open training camp as the top running back on the depth chart if he's healthy.

"P.J. has shown the last two years, that when healthy, he's a dominant football player, somebody that makes explosive plays in the games," Flood said. "Now, as he comes back from that ACL injury, he's got to prove that he can do it again and that really won't ultimately happen until training camp. But I have no reason to believe it won't happen based on everything I've seen so far."

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Flood didn't provide specific updates on players who dealt with injuries during spring practice, but he said he feels good about the state of the team a month before training camp opens.

"It's all a work in progress," Flood said. "We still have four weeks left in the summer program, then they get a week off and then we start training camp. There's still a lot of time left for rehab and healing and moving forward from all those injuries."

With training camp a month away and a two-week recruiting dead period starting, Flood's main focus on Monday was his third annual charity golf outing at Fiddlers Elbow Country Club. The event, which featured a record 328 golfers, raised $70,000 to be split by four charities — Team LeGrand of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, Special Olympics New Jersey, Embrace Kids Foundation and Together 4 Kids. The tournament has raised approximately $200,000 for charity in its three years.

"What I like about all four of these charities is they're more relationships than they are charities," Flood said. "Certainly, everybody understands directly the Team LeGrand connection. But I think people see the connection we have with the Special Olympics. Embrace Kids is a charity organization with pediatric cancer in New Brunswick through Robert Wood Johnson Hospital that our players are involved in, and not just are they involved in it, as they move on to the NFL, players like Brian Leonard and Devin and Jason McCourty, they continue to be involved in that charity. There's a lot of great charities out there. For us as a program and for me personally, the ones I want to be involved with are really more about relationships that we have because I think it makes it more fulfilling for everybody."

Dan Duggan may be reached at dduggan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DDuggan21. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.