The new-look Cincinnati Bengals roster took to the practice fields on June 2 and among the highlights of the session was the sight of Erick All running and catching passes.
All, the Bengals’ fourth-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft and local product out of Fairfield High School, suffered a torn ACL in November of 2024 and hasn’t played since. His knee injury was so severe it forced him to miss a season and a half.
After two surgeries in 12 months, All is enjoying being back on the field more than ever.
“I love football… that’s really what it is,” All said.
There were moments in his recovery where he questioned if he should keep playing. His injury history is complex. When the Bengals selected All in April of 2024, one of the biggest questions around the pick centered around his durability.
At Iowa, where he played his final season of college football during the 2023 season, All tore his ACL. The injury took place on the same knee he eventually injured again nine games into his rookie season. He also suffered a serious back injury in 2022 when he played at Michigan.
When All arrived in Cincinnati, the Bengals had a plan in place to ease him back onto the field. As the 2024 season got underway and All returned to full strength, the Bengals carved out a role for him in the offense, and he hit the ground running.
All served a role the Bengals didn’t have until he joined the team. He brought a physical presence to Cincinnati’s run game, and it immediately made an impact.
It’s why internally the news of All’s injury was hard to digest.
“To have the significance of the injuries that he’s had to miss a whole season – an extra season really. Half of the first one and then the whole second one. It’s been challenging for him,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “I think he’s handled it really well.”
Once again, the Bengals and All find themselves in a familiar position. All is on a progression plan, and Cincinnati will closely monitor his workload.
This time around feels different for All, though. The 6-foot-5, 255-pound tight end admitted his first ACL surgery at Iowa wasn’t done properly. He claims it’s why his ACL tore for a second time.
All took time to summarize his recovery process with the local media in Cincinnati and said his knee tore for a second time because the “outside of (my) knee was unstable and the tissue was dying from the surgery before.”
He later said his knee never healed right in the first place which required his new surgeon to perform two different procedures.
Once his surgeon, Dr. Dan Cooper, who is an NFL knee specialist and the head team physician for the Dallas Cowboys, examined his knee he was told he would need two surgeries.
The first surgery was to clean up what went wrong in the first procedure, then All said he needed three months to let it heal before the final surgery could take place. This is why All’s recovery timeline was longer than most.
“It was like a 12-month recovery, but everything went smooth,” All said. “Dr. Cooper, he’s legit, so everything feels fine. I feel completely stable, my legs are strong, really the whole root of all problems is like just making sure your quads were like as strong as possible, so I just did a whole bunch of quad workouts every single day.”
All said he’s yet to be told if he’s fully cleared but did say if the Bengals had a game tomorrow, he could play. Taylor wants to take things slow and has yet to make any decisions on what his training camp workload will look like.
The Bengals won’t begin padded practices until August so there’s plenty of time for All to slowly work his way back.
All feels good physically right now and most importantly, he’s confident in his approach and mindset. He wants to give his NFL career another shot, and the Bengals are eager to get him back on the field.
“He loves football and he loves the physical portion of football,” Taylor said of All. “The word physical in the dictionary is a picture of Erick All trying to put his face through somebody’s soul, that’s the best way I can describe him.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Erick All shares details of complex road to recovery for Bengals
Reporting by Kelsey Conway, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
