Washington Commanders defensive end Chase Young returned to practice Wednesday. Young, who tore his ACL last November, was activated from the reserve/PUP list Wednesday morning, and the Commanders now have 21 days to either activate Young to the roster or place him on season-ending injured reserve.
Young is going to play — and soon. How soon? Young isn’t quite ready to answer that question.
“I ain’t gonna go into it,” Young said when asked about potentially playing Sunday. “I ain’t gonna go into that one, but all I know is I’m sticking to my plan.”
Young’s knee injury was serious, and during his long and arduous recovery, he had plenty of downtime when he wasn’t rehabbing.
“I think the biggest thing that came out of it was patience,” he said. “Knowing that it’s just on God’s time, not my time. Things happen for a reason. We never know why they happened but what I did was I tried to find out why it happened. I tried to just think about what in my life, this happened, that happened. But I just, at the end of the day, I know it’s all on God, and I know that he’s in my corner. I don’t even look at it really as a setback. I just look at it as a test from God, you know? I can come back stronger.”
Young’s positive outlook is refreshing.
One topic many are curious about is are the players tired of dealing with the off-field stuff. Young was asked about the Snyder family reportedly exploring all options in regard to selling the team.
“Yeah, I mean, I feel like we just lean on our teammates in the locker room,” Young said. “We really don’t pay attention a lot to the outside noise cuz we have so much stuff we have to do inside the facility to win games. We really, uh, we just, we stay the task at hand, got the blinders on and that’s really how we rocking there.”
Young sounded like his head coach on that answer, which was perfect.
One more fun nugget from Young’s chat with the media. Young was asked about former teammate and current assistant defensive line coach Ryan Kerrigan.
“Oh, that’s tough,” Youn said. “Shoot. Growing up playing the video game with RK, then playing with RK now RK is coaching me. I feel like it’s a dream come true for real.”
Young has never hidden his admiration for Kerrigan.
