Commanders edge rusher Chase Young shed his knee brace for the first training camp practice last month. He has not had it on since and is back to being the Chase Young the team is accustomed to seeing.
“I feel myself,” Young said, via Stephen Whyno of the Associated Press. “I feel good, and I’m running around, and I’m feeling explosive again.”
Young, who is entering a contract year after the Commanders declined his fifth-year option, is nearly two years removed from the torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. The complicated surgery included grafting Young’s left patellar tendon to repair the right ACL tear.
He missed most of 2022, playing only 115 snaps in three games.
Between the injury in 2021 and the rehab in 2022, Young played only 12 games the past two seasons and made 1.5 sacks.
Young, though, showed who he was as a rookie when he made 7.5 sacks.
“It was almost kind of a pie in the sky that he would be who he is [when he returned in 2022],” Commanders coach Ron Rivera said. "[We realized] it’s just going to be a matter of time. He had to work through those things, [and] we were hoping he would get back soon, but it just didn’t work and that’s all part of it.”
Young, who worked out at Ohio State this offseason, said he talked to Bills edge rusher Von Miller and Ravens receiver Odell Beckham Jr. about returning from an ACL tear.
“They said, ‘We just bounce back. That’s just what we do,” Young said. “That’s my plan, and I guess y’all are just going to see what happens.”
