Former Eagle Devon Allen is joining Michael Johnson’s new track league. Are his football days done?
Allen is “about 90%” recovered from his third ACL tear, which he suffered in practice with the Eagles in December. He isn’t ruling out a return to the NFL.
Former Eagles receiver Devon Allen is joining Michael Johnson’s new Grand Slam Track league, but he’s not closing the door on football just yet.
“I love football,” Allen, 29, told The Inquirer. “It’s been one of my passions, one of my favorite sports, since I was 5 years old. It’s always hard to to give up something, right? I felt like I was giving it up, even though I knew I was going to come back at some point in 2017 when I semi-retired. ... If I’m 100% healthy in four weeks, and there’s a team looking for a guy like me, then that’s a possibility.”
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Allen is “about 90%” recovered from his third ACL tear, which he suffered in practice with the Eagles in December after having appeared in two games. His plan is to get to 100% by January, for the start of the Grand Slam Track season, a new venture headlined by Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
“With all the deceleration and accelerations and change of directions in football, you really want to make sure that you feel really stable and strong when you have a knee injury and you’re returning, and track is really different,” Allen said. “We’re running straight, and, for me, I’m jumping every three steps, so not as much risk there. We decided to just focus on being 100% as opposed to rushing back to track. Recovery is a little bit quicker if you’re just focusing on track, but I really wanted to focus on getting my total knee function and everything back so I feel like the type of athlete I was before.”
Allen is a two-time Olympian in the 110-meter hurdles, but he was unable to qualify for Paris because of his injury recovery. In the new league, Allen also will get to compete in the 100 meters and race in both events four times at Grand Slam races throughout the year.
“In the pro circuit, athletes don’t race a ton because they don’t want to get beat, or, for whatever reason, they could be not feeling quite peak shape yet,” Allen said. “In this format, you have to race regardless. … It’s definitely interesting, and it’s going to be a little bit more in my wheelhouse, because I have been an elite sprinter as well as a 110 [hurdles] guy.”