Reality: Houston Texans center Justin Britt hasn’t played a down of football since tearing his ACL eight games into the 2019 season with the Seattle Seahawks.
Also reality: the 29-year-old is not tentative about making his return to the NFL following a 2020 season wherein no team rostered him nor did he get any meaningful game reps.
The former 2014 second-round pick from Missouri told reports on a Zoom call on May 20 that he has zero doubt about coming back from the knee injury sustained on Oct. 27, 2019.
“My knee in college, I tore my ACL and had a pretty bad meniscus tear,” Britt said. “This time around, it was just an isolated ACL. As soon as it tore, I didn’t hit depression. I was like, ‘all right, let’s do this.’”
To repair Britt’s torn ACL, he had Dr. James Andrews, a renowned sports surgeon, conduct the procedure.
“In the back of my mind, I was hopeful that I would still have a job last year,” Britt said. “But at soon as they cut me, it was kind of like, ‘all right, screw you. I’m going to get right.’”
The Seahawks released Britt in April of 2020. Britt had a tryout with the Green Bay Packers in early September, and later was worked out by the Kansas City Chiefs in late January amid their Super Bowl run. However, no team took a chance on Britt to complete his comeback.
Said Britt: “I took that approach every day, rehabbed every day. Rehabbed out of my garage during the first part of the pandemic. I feel like I had the right approach and I knew how to attack it. I’ve been there, done that, so it was nothing new to me for sure.”
The Texans signed Britt on March 8 to replace center Nick Martin, who started 62 games for the Texans from 2017-20.