Essendon are weighing up whether to call on gun forward Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti for their AFL elimination final against the Western Bulldogs.
McDonald-Tipungwuti has missed Essendon's past two games for personal reasons, during which time he completed a heavy training block to build fitness.
But he impressed in Sunday's scratch match against GWS with Rutten confident the forward was "getting closer" to an AFL return.
"It's probably a little bit early in the week. We haven't finalised our selection yet," Rutten said on Wednesday.
"'Walla' had a bit of a run around in our VFL game on Sunday and got through that fine, and that was good.
"He was really pleased and looking forward to doing that and that was part of his plan in his progression.
"... We probably only anticipated him playing about a half initially but at half-time he was feeling good and enjoying it and wanted to keep going, so we decided to do that and I think that was a really positive move.
"We've got a couple more training sessions to go this week and we'll just keep working our way through that with Walla."
Rutten stressed Essendon wouldn't rush McDonald-Tipungwuti back into their line-up for Sunday's final in Launceston if he wasn't ready.
"It's about continually monitoring him and making sure that we're supporting him best we can and not just kind of rushing him back in because it's a final all of a sudden," Rutten said.
"We're still making sure that he's our priority and we're supporting him best we can, whilst making sure we're doing the best thing for the team in terms of our selection as well."
Off-season recruit Jye Caldwell, who hasn't played at senior level since a serious hamstring injury in round two, veteran Cale Hooker and winger Brayden Ham also pushed their cases for selection in the scratch match.
Essendon face a decision on whether to roll the dice on Kyle Langford, who has missed three games amid a cautious approach to a recurrence of a hamstring injury.
"Kyle's certainly pushing hard... he's getting to that time where he's becoming available for selection," Rutten said.
"We need to get him through training.
"There's a few little things he still needs to check off this week for us to be really confident, for him to be really confident to put his hand up to be available so those things need to play out.
"But we're hopeful that he's really close."
