Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Packer Plus
Bakhtiari starts, overcomes concerns
Detroit — As his return from the torn ACL neared, apprehension built inside David Bakhtiari’s gut. It was an unfamiliar feeling for a superstar, unsettling at first, increasingly terrifying as his surgically repaired left knee’s recovery lagged.
For eight seasons, Bakhtiari let nothing in his career sidetrack him. A fourthround pick who became a first-team AllPro at one of the game’s most demanding positions, Bakhtiari is not accustomed to setbacks. His rise from obscurity has been a continual progression, from afterthought to starter, from the shadows of a talented offensive line to the highest-paid offensive lineman in NFL history.
This recovery, Bakhtiari determined, would be no different. Not long after his left knee twisted awkwardly on the Green Bay Packers’ practice field that final day of 2020, making 2021 the hardest year of Bakhtiari’s professional life, the All-Pro left tackle penciled a date on the calendar. He would be back around Week 9 at Kansas City, maybe Week 10 against Seattle. Bakhtiari grinded, sweated, worked each day over 10 months, the typical timeline for an ACL recovery. He was activated from the physically unable to perform list three days after the Packers returned from the Chiefs game.
Then Bakhtiari got on the practice field, and his knee felt different. For a player whose talent is reliant on uncommon flexibility, Bakhtiari couldn’t bend his leg the way he needed. Fluid fluctuated between 80 and 100 cubic centimeters, making any movement uncomfortable. There was more scar tissue in his knee than expected, preventing him from being explosive.
“It didn’t feel normal,” Bakhtiari said. In the two months between his initial return and Sunday’s debut in a 37-30 loss at the Detroit Lions, Bakhtiari reinvented expectations for himself. Long ago, he accepted his knee might not enable him to be the Pro Bowl blindside blocker everyone has seen over the past five seasons. Just make his knee competitive,
Bakhtiari asked trainers. Let it feel normal again.
“My knee doesn’t need to be perfect,” Bakhtiari said. “It just needs to work.”
Bakhtiari had what the Packers surely believed was a promising 2021 debut in their regular-season finale Sunday. He played 27 snaps against the Lions, finally leaving the finale after the first three snaps of the Packers’ fourth drive. A play earlier, Bakhtiari reached the second level on a run play to seal Lions linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin. It was an athletic block that tested mobility on his knee, enough for Bakhtiari to feel good about his workday.
“I think he just felt more fatigued than anything else,” coach Matt LaFleur said of Bakhtiari leaving in the middle of a drive.
“I wouldn’t say it’s anything we’re truly concerned about, but I think with anybody coming back, you have to see how you respond from this. What does tomorrow look like? What does it feel like? So we’ll continue to work and monitor.”
Instead of a hard snap count, the Packers entered Sunday with a range in mind for how long Bakhtiari would play.
He reached the high end of the range, Bakhtiari indicated. LaFleur reserved any expectations for how much Bakhtiari might play in two weeks when the Packers host the NFC divisional playoff round at Lambeau Field, unsure how his left tackle’s knee will respond to its first exertion in more than a year.
If the knee feels good, Bakhtiari said there’s no reason to think he won’t be ready to go for the postseason.
That the Packers will get their franchise left tackle back for their playoff run — at whatever capacity Bakhtiari can play — at times felt farfetched over the past two months. The physical effort required to return from a torn ACL is immense. The mental toll was even more taxing, Bakhtiari said. When his knee failed to feel normal on that first attempt at a comeback, Bakhtiari got a second surgery to ease the swelling from excess fluid.
The surgery was a setback, delaying what Bakhtiari expected to be his return date. After surgery, Bakhtiari said, he didn’t know if playing at all this season would be possible.
“That’s why I talk about more mentally,” Bakhtiari said. “It was ups and downs. Coming back, I had a goal set. You usually have a general idea of where you’re going to be, and frankly I didn’t feel right. Something was going on. That’s unfortunate, but for me you can’t control it. You just have to accept the cards you’re given and play your hand. For me, going back to the drawing board, getting cut into again. I always tell the doc, I let him inside me twice now. So it’s a little bit uncomfortable.
“But whatever needed to be done, I was just happy to be able to get through it. Finally, my knee started to respond in the right direction. It started trending in a positive direction.”
Bakhtiari said he was in constant communication with other players who had traveled the road back from ACL surgery, most notably longtime teammate Bryan Bulaga. The veteran right tackle has successfully returned from two torn ACLs in his career, one in each knee. He was able to feed helpful information, what to expect, how the knee should feel, but Bakhtiari learned each recovery is different.
It’s uncertain what the Packers will get from Bakhtiari in the playoffs. That he even returned in Detroit was a bit of a surprise. Bakhtiari, a veteran who has played plenty of games on the big stage, said taking snaps in Sunday’s finale wasn’t his initial plan.
Then quarterback Aaron Rodgers texted him midweek, letting him know it would be beneficial for them to share a few drives.
“It’s been a long year for him,” Rodgers said. “I’m just so proud of him to get back out there. We had a conversation on Wednesday, and I don’t think he was thinking about playing. I just kind of floated the idea. I said, ‘Hey, why don’t you come out and play a couple series Sunday?’ For whatever reason, that kind of maybe slightly adjusted the course and direction of what he wanted to do. I’m so proud of him. He’s been through so much. Obviously being really close to him and getting to have a lot of conversations with him, it’s been tough mentally, which is understandable.
“There’s nothing like running out there and seeing the ‘Big Giraffe’ heading out as well.”