Las Vegas Raiders draftee DJ Glaze tore his ACL twice in high school.
On Saturday, offensive lineman DJ Glaze’s dreams came true when the Las Vegas Raiders selected him in the third round of the 2024 NFL Draft.
Glaze one of the best offensive tackles in the Big Ten last season, and now, he finds himself facing a legitimate opportunity to earn some important snaps on the Raiders’ offensive line next season.
When considering his injury history, it’s quite extraordinary to see where Glaze is today.
The odds were against Glaze from the early days of his football journey, as the Charlotte, North Carolina native suffered two ACL tears in high school, both on the same knee.
“I started playing when I was four, so I mean I was pretty much willing to do anything to get to this point here,” Glaze said after he was drafted. “This is only the beginning. So, I mean, the person I am, I wasn’t going to let two ACL injuries stop me from reaching my goals. It was a time you’re away from football, you have to work extremely hard rehabbing to make sure it’s back healthy again.
But it was a time where it’s like, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from getting to my goals
though. I just kept going, kept rehabbing it, kept making it stronger and that was just an obstacle that was in the way at the time.”
As Glaze said, he began playing football at a very young age, so the rookie had a long time to think about the idea of one day making it to the NFL.
“You get better and you find out the competition gets more and more each year,” Glaze said. “When I kind of got to Maryland, I was like this is really something that I’m capable of. When you go to a big college it’s like this is something that I can do and when you start playing and you start having good reps and you start kind of dominating, it gets more realistic each year and it leads up to this moment.”
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