Packers Draft Prospect Jacob Bayer Made Unprecedented Comeback from Torn ACL

GREEN BAY, Wis. – After earning all-conference honors and being named an Academic All-American after the 2023 season, Arkansas State center Jacob Bayer knew he had a chance to make it to the NFL as he looked forward to the 2024 season.

But on March 30, the sixth practice of spring camp, disaster struck. Bayer sustained a torn ACL during spring practice. On April 2, he had surgery.

“It was tough. I was thinking that I needed to get back as soon as I could because I didn’t want to let the moment pass me by after having a good junior season,” Bayer said on Friday, a few days after his NFL Draft visit with the Green Bay Packers.

“I just felt like I had to get back as soon as I could, because I didn’t want to become kind of lost in the wind. All the momentum I built up, that could have been lost. I was definitely nervous about how things could have gone if it hadn’t all worked out.”

Packers star Rashan Gary suffered a torn ACL at Detroit in November 2022. Nine months and one day later, he made his debut at training camp. That was an incredibly impressive comeback. For most players, an ACL is a 10-month process from injury to return to game action.

“They said it’s going to be nine to 12 months. You’re an O-lineman, you have to take the time,” Bayer said.

Bayer is not most players. Showing incredible toughness, drive and love for the game – intangibles that no doubt have endeared him to teams – he made what might be an unprecedented comeback from a career-altering injury. Incredibly, barely five months after the injury, Bayer was in the starting lineup and wound up earning second-team all-conference and was selected for the prestigious Senior Bowl.

How?

“Basically, I asked if it could be done in terms of I could get back at some point in the season,” he explained, “and they said, ‘Adrian Peterson got back in like six months.’ So, I set that as a goal and we pushed everything forward up about a month. Or two. Or a lot, actually. Basically, just trying to cut everything in half in terms getting back.”

Whatever the milepost on the road to recovery, Bayer blew past it as if he were driving a Porsche on some country back road outside his hometown of Grandview, Texas. He rehabbed the injury three times a day while strengthening the surrounding muscles to take the stress off the on-the-mend ligament.

Trainers, doctors and coaches know the timetable for ACL recovery because it’s a relatively common injury in sports. Did anyone tell him he was nuts?

Arkansas State center and Packers draft prospect Jacob Bayer | Photo courtesy Arkansas State Athletics

“Yeah, I got told that I should just sit out a year and, ‘There’s no point’ and ‘You had a good junior season, so just rest up and come back a year after and things will be all right.’ Basically, when it was starting to become more of a thing, a reality of I could get back in six months, five-and-a-half months, like, I was going to re-injure myself and it was really risky.

“And it was. It’s not like it wasn’t. It was just something that I had set out and I couldn’t imagine myself sitting there watching my team play. If I could be out there, then I wanted to be out there. So, I just set my mind to it and got after it.”

Bayer was limited to individual drills for the start of training camp. During team drills, he’d stand about 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage and walk through the plays. Only once school began and the season approached did he take the next step of getting some live action at practice.

He sat out the season-opening game against Central Arkansas. A week later, on Sept. 7 – exactly five months and eight days after injury – Bayer started and played every snap against Tulsa.

What were his emotions after reaching such an audacious goal?

“I was more scared than anything, to be honest,” he said. “It was really scary, just because up until that point, I had only two weeks of any sort of contact at all. My first full-contact reps, I only did one team period a day. I’d get four reps a day. That was it, just because that’s all I could take. I was doing everything else in terms of warm-ups and all the individual things, but when it came down to full-speed hitting, I was only doing eight reps a day, 10 reps a day, and then trying to sneak in a couple.

“But, really, I was nervous because football was almost on the back burner and getting back for my knee was on the forefront. So, I was nervous, not knowing if I was still the player that I was a year before. But it felt great, I know that, and then once it was over, once we had won the game, it felt like it was all worth it at that point. But, yeah, it was nerve-wracking.”

During his debut game, he said he felt a pop in the knee but didn’t tell anyone and stayed in the game. A week later, he started at defending national champion Michigan. And he started every game the rest of the season to earn all-Sun Belt Conference second-team honors. Pro Football Focus charged him with only one sack.

Having set a standard of performance in 2023, he liked how he finished the season.

“I feel like later on in the season, I was pretty close,” he said. “I felt like my best game of the year was the last game of the year. We had a month going into [the bowl victory over Bowling Green] to prepare and I had a month to keep rehabbing my knee. My leg can get stronger but I can’t sit there and make my ACL stronger or make it not hurt.

“So, that month going in really helped out a lot. As of now, I feel better than I was my junior year. Even going into the Senior Bowl, I felt a lot better than I had three months before.”

At the Senior Bowl, scouts expressed their admiration for what he had accomplished.

“A lot of them were just like, how’d you do it?” Bayer said. “And then I kind of gave them the same thing. I worked really hard at it. It was a lot of pain management. Obviously, I had a lot of people supporting me, helping me through it, and everybody was really understanding of what I was going through.

“They’re in shock with it, as well. Playing any sport, but especially playing football, that’s a tough thing to do. But it’s good because it shows the teams that I’m willing to do what it takes to try and get back to play, that I’m tough, which is good because you’re trying to have all the intangibles.”

As one scout said, “I’ve never heard of anything like that. The kid is a bad ass.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that. The kid is a bad ass.”
NFL scout on Jacob Bayer's comeback

While there was some concern that his remarkable comeback would lead to the injury not healing properly, that was not the case. With clean MRIs, Bayer’s extensive workouts leading into the draft – about 3 1/2 hours with a trainer early in the day and another workout on his own later – have focused on football and not the knee.

Bayer, whose intelligence has also been a selling point during predraft visits with the Packers, Vikings and Chargers, said he’s going to spend the draft with his parents and his agent, Rob Sheets, in Grandview. After he gets that phone call of a lifetime, he’ll celebrate with dinner.

“I’m a little nervous because I’m a late-round to a possible undrafted, so nothing’s a guarantee,” he said. “I’ll be pretty excited. Some guys know they’re getting drafted. To me, it’s up in the air.

“So, I’ve thought about it some. And either way, whatever happens, I know that I’m going to get to a rookie minicamp and get to a training camp. That’s really all I can put most of my focus on just because once I get there, it matters what I do there and not where I got drafted or who picked me. It’s just what I do in that month, two months before the season.”

More Green Bay Packers News

The #Packers all-busts team.https://t.co/ayP7Hb5fYb
— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) April 14, 2025