Gareth Widdop will avoid surgery on an injured shoulder but St George Illawarra are unsure how long their captain will spend on the sidelines.
Widdop dislocated his right shoulder in the struggling Dragons' shock 40-4 flogging by Parramatta on Saturday night.
His shoulder was popped back in on the night but there were fears the star five-eighth could miss the rest of the NRL season.
That appears to have been scaled back but the Dragons won't say when he will return.
"The initial scans of Widdop's shoulder have been positive and indicate non-operative management at this point in time," the club said on Monday.
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"Widdop's rate of progress through the early stages of rehab will dictate his trajectory to return to play."
Widdop's injury continues a run of bad luck for the early-season pacesetters after they got through the first half of the season almost completely unscathed.
The Dragons maintained an unchanged starting line-up for the first 16 rounds of the competition but Nene Macdonald (foot), Paul Vaughan (ankle) and Widdop have since been sidelined.
The Dragons have lost five of their past six games to fall to fifth spot, stirring memories of late-season collapses in 2015 and 2017.
Macdonald has at least since returned from his foot problems, while Vaughan should also be back before the finals.
Widdop had been one of the keys to the Dragons' early-season success as part of his combination with Ben Hunt, and is the NRL's second-leading points-scorer on 191, just five behind the Sydney Roosters' Latrell Mitchell.
