10 NFL teams vie for 7 playoff spots on final day of season
Washington’s defensive end Young emerges to lead team in tonight’s playoffs-bid showdown against Eagles
The loudest voice is the youngest. It booms from the middle of the circle, deep and serious, urging everyone to be “a dog,” to be “a dude.” We’re playing for the playoffs — the ’offs, boy — and why can’t you give everything you’ve got?
Other than the rare video clip, there is no way to hear the voice leading the Washington Football Team’s pregame huddle. There’s no way to listen in from the stands or on TV over the pounding stadium music. And the only ones who truly knew its power in the moment are the other players in the circle, so watch how they respond.
They are all older. Many have earned more money. They understand realities the voice does not — wives, children, aging — and yet it resonates. They bounce on their toes, nod their helmets, shimmy their shoulders as the voice plays conductor. There is a moment after it has stopped, a split second really, when the circle closes tight, as if Chase Young’s voice had pulled them together.
“It’s crazy unusual for a rookie to have the type of leadership that Chase has. Genuine leadership,” quarterback Alex Smith said. “I think a lot of young guys, especially high picks, I think you feel pressure to do it some way or somehow. I think Chase is so comfortable in his own skin and being who he is. I think guys respect that, but it’s rare to have a guy that young step in and really affect his teammates as positively as he has.”
The rookie defensive end did not intend for any of this to happen. He didn’t set out to become a locker room leader. He doesn’t ping-pong up and down the sidelines, chatting with teammates and coaches and the guy who holds the down marker, for show.
“That’s just me,” he said. “During the games, I can’t sit down, for real. Like, we’re playing. I can’t sit down.”
Young said recently the caffeine-like adrenaline kick that turns him into the Energizer Bunny came early. He is about
to play the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night with the season on the line. But the pregame circle will signal that one of the most important developments of the year has already happened.
Players and coaches knew Young was talented — and as the defensive rookie of the year favorite, with 6.5 sacks and four forced fumbles, he has lived up to those expectations. But the leadership surprised them. The 21-year-old grew this year, earning the respect of a locker room and showing his father, a law enforcement officer, his thoughtfulness in deciding to kneel for the national anthem. The growth crystallized
crystallized two weeks ago when coach Ron Rivera rescinded the captaincy of quarterback Dwayne Haskins and the team voted for Young to replace him, a rare honor for a nonquarterback rookie.
Washington believes Young is a franchise cornerstone. There’s hope he will wear the C (for captain) on his jersey for a generation. And Young wants to validate this belief with action, an echo of the credo he carries Sundays: “You can’t be loud and not make no plays.”
“Since I came here, I haven’t been on bull----,” Young said. “Guys knew that just from how I carry myself throughout the building. I tried to let everybody know I wasn’t on bull-- — and that I’m here to work. I’m here to win games.”
Young can’t pinpoint when he became a team leader. He thinks it’s possible he started because youth teams orbit around their best players.
The first time the leadership stood out was in high school. Sophomore year, he transferred from St. Vincent Pallotti to DeMatha, a national powerhouse. Some players and parents dismissed him as a kid who only excelled against weaker competition. But in his first game, against Miami Central on ESPN, Young registered three sacks. Soon after, coaches noticed Young grow more comfortable speaking up. He let everyone know what the team needed to do to win — including older teammates.
Father Greg Young was hard on Chase growing up, saying, “I’m your father, not your fan,” and instilling a sense of accountability. He wanted Chase to understand actions and consequences.
When Greg Young held his first-born son, he vowed to be the dad he didn’t have and to honor the mentors he did.
Early on at Ohio State, Chase was not a leader. By junior year, he had become one of the Buckeyes’ best players, and the team voted him captain. He began to lead the pregame circle, and he realized he liked “getting the guys juiced up,” transferring to them some of the energy that wells up inside him before a game.
In Washington, Young followed a warp-speed version of the same timeline. The longest-tenured and highest-paid players, such as defensive end
Ryan Kerrigan and cornerback Kendall Fuller, stopped seeing him as a rookie in training camp. The younger players, such as left tackle Geron Christian and cornerback Jimmy Moreland, noticed the way he sought advice from the veterans. Kevin Pierre-Louis, a linebacker, said he was “blessed to be around a talent” such as Young.
Looking back, Rivera realized Young could lead late in camp when he flattened Hall of Fame running back Adrian Peterson in a goal-line drill.
In his NFL debut, Young registered 1.5 sacks. He blended power and finesse with a sense of showmanship.
In Week 7, Young led in a way even those closest to him didn’t expect. He took a knee for the national anthem. This wasn’t unprecedented advocacy — in June, Young advocated for an end to police brutality in a viral video with other NFL stars — but he hadn’t discussed this decision with anyone beforehand, including his father. Young said there wasn’t one specific event that inspired him to follow Colin Kaepernick’s lead, that he just felt compelled to protest racial injustice.
“We’re in America,” Young said. “I have my rights, and I can take a knee. It’s a free country. Everything going on in America, we got to get things right.”
There is, on the surface, tension between Young’s protest and his family. Greg served in the Arlington County Sheriff ’s Office in Virginia for 27 years, and several extended family members in the last few generations have served in law enforcement. Chase showed interest in the field, too, majoring in criminal justice at Ohio State.
But neither Chase nor his father sees kneeling as disrespectful to law enforcement. Chase said he and Greg have talked about “things that are going on” in terms of police brutality, and he is mindful of how they relate to his protest, but he saw kneeling more as advocacy for a broader message of racial justice.
In mid-November, Chase Young returned to the visitor’s locker room in Detroit distraught. He had just been flagged for roughing the passer, a mistake that led to a 59-yard field goal that sealed Washington’s defeat. The situation felt dire: Young only had 3.5 of the 13.5 sacks his father predicted before the year, and Washington had lost seven of its last eight games.
The next Sunday, Young arrived at FedEx Field wired. He burned to make everyone forget the mistake, and he knew the spotlight would be on him against Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, the only player drafted before him in April. He wanted to prove himself all over again — and before the game, Young felt 100 percent for the first time all season, free from nagging hip and groin injuries.
During warmups, Young felt a surge of energy. He told defensive tackle Jonathan Allen he wanted to say something to the team. Allen said, “You got ‘em.” Young didn’t prepare the speech, and he doesn’t know where the ideas came from, but he could tell they resonated with his teammates.
“That’s the power of being a vocal guy,” Young said, “if you know how to touch your guys’ minds and hearts.”
In the first quarter, during a goal-line stand, Young leveled Burrow as he scrambled, knocking the ball loose and preventing a touchdown. Washington won. Four days later, on the road against the Dallas Cowboys for Thanksgiving, Allen approached Young.
“I didn’t know the second week that it would happen again,” Young said. “Jon just came up to me, like, ‘You want ‘em again?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. Bet.’ And then it just kept going.”
Since the pregame circle on Thanksgiving, Young has wreaked havoc. He bull-rushed for a sack against Dallas. He timed up a key goal-line stop on fourth down in an upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He turned in his career day against the San Francisco 49ers — six tackles, one sack, a 47-yard scoop-andscore. Two weeks later, Young walked into the locker room, and an equipment manager asked if he had seen his jersey. Young saw, in his locker, the patch of a captain.
Young understands he has set high expectations. The last year has been better than he could’ve hoped, and if Rivera is the voice of the franchise, Young is the voice of its young core. He thinks about it sometimes, and he’s not ready for the season to be over.
“I just can’t stop,” he said. “That’s all I think now. It’s like, people look at me certain ways now, so I can’t stop.”