As the Browns took the field in the beginning of the second quarter against the Steelers, Chubb took the handoff from QB Deshaun Watson and ran through the gap in the defensive line toward the end zone. However, he was tackled short of the goal line and sustained an injury.

His teammates tried to help him up, but he stayed on the ground and took off his helmet. The Browns training staff rushed onto the field to assess his injury and brought out the cart. As he was loaded up onto the cart, his teammates all gathered around him.

"I had a pit in my stomach," Browns assistant strength and conditioning coach Dale Jones said. "It was just an emptiness feeling. But at the same time, there's a little voice saying, 'if anybody's going to bounce back from this come back, it's Nick Chubb.' And I'll be there in whatever form he needed me to be."

Rock was one of the athletic trainers on the field assessing the injury and sat next to Chubb on the cart as they went back to the locker room. Throughout the assessment, Rock explained each step to Chubb, from putting the air cast on his leg to placing him on the cart and getting imaging done to further assess the injury.

After Chubb had X-rays taken and his knee was placed in a brace, he was sent to the hospital for further imaging. Browns Director of Rehabilitation John Pfizenmayer fit Chubb for the right brace and crutches. Jones packed up his locker and his belongings with Chubb's mother, LaVelle Chubb. When Jones went back into the training room to bring his belongings, he said Chubb told him to "get the bat files back out," a reference to Jones putting Batman on Chubb's workout sheets.

They loaded Chubb into the ambulance with Rock beside him and LaVelle following behind. They headed to the hospital in Pittsburgh.

"So, we were together through that first phase of the process, and all the imaging came back OK. We ended up getting in a car with one of our security guys and driving directly back to Cleveland. We were halfway home by the time the game ended," Rock said. "We saw him first thing the next morning, and kind of walked through and started the process of what this is going to look like, in terms of surgery and recovery."

When Zach Chubb watched his younger brother go down in the game, he immediately booked a flight to Cleveland. Along with his sister Neidra and his daughter Juliana, the three traveled from their hometown in Cedartown, Ga., and arrived in Cleveland on Sept. 20 and stayed through the weekend.

In the days following his injury, the house bustled with people, from coaches coming to see Nick to others bringing food. Nick received a number of texts and calls from teammates and coaching staff members. Zach and his family kept Nick busy playing games like Monopoly and other board games to spend time together. During that time, Rock said they also received the imaging back from the follow-up MRI, and they sat down with Sheehan and Browns Head Physician James Voos, M.D., to create a tentative initial recovery plan.

With Nick's injury history to the same knee, there was an added complexity to the surgery and recovery process. Voos said they had to take into account the surgical plan from the previous injury to develop a sophisticated approach to work around the prior surgery. They consulted with multiple physicians across the country that Nick had worked with previously in order to develop their plan.

Nick also received second opinions from doctors around the country as they worked through the decision on the best course of action for the surgical plan; however, Nick elected to have the surgery with Voos at University Hospitals. After the initial trauma of the injury and swelling of the knee went down, as well as reviewing all the information from the imaging, they scheduled Nick's first surgery.

"This is a significant injury that not a lot of athletes have been able to return from, and certainly Nick has had the perseverance and the work ethic to get through this," Voos said. "So, while we're very excited to have participated in, and we're very honored to have participated in his care, this is all him and his effort."

Nick underwent two successful surgeries to repair his knee. The first, which occurred in September 2023, repaired his medial capsule, meniscus and medial collateral ligament (MCL) in order to rebuild the lining of the joint and collateral ligaments. The second took place in November 2023 to fix his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) to reconstruct the inside of his knee.

LaVelle traveled up to be with Nick for his first surgery, helping him through the initial recovery in the following days. She would frequently travel back to Cleveland to offer him support in any capacity he needed during his recovery.

"When he had the second surgery, Mr. Batman wanted to go by himself," LaVelle Chubb said. "And so, I respected that. I didn't like that idea, but I went after the fact. We're a really close-knit family, and so just the support of knowing that we're not just here because you're playing football, we're here because you belong to us and we love you, and whatever one of us go through, we all go through."

Following his surgeries, Chubb knew the long road of recovery that was ahead of him. He'd been in the same position once before, just eight years earlier.

When he was a sophomore at the University of Georgia in 2015, Chubb also sustained a season-ending knee injury in which he dislocated his left knee, tore his medical collateral ligament (MCL), lateral collateral ligament (LCL) and posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), and suffered cartilage damage. However, unlike his 2023 injury, the ACL was still intact. Nick Chubb spent months rehabbing before he returned to the field in the season opener of 2016.

While the two injuries were slightly different, the timeline of recovery was similar.

"I think the biggest way it prepared me was just knowing that it takes time. It's not going to happen overnight," Chubb said. "So, first time at Georgia, obviously know, 'Why am I not better yet? Why it's still hurting? Why is it still stiff?' And then day by day, week by week, month by month, everything got better. So, I think this time around, I knew it was gonna take a while. And I wasn't beating myself up about things, not being where I want to be in a certain timeframe. And so, I think just the patience was what I really took from getting hurt at Georgia."

His grandmother, Brenda Weaver, gave him a poem following the injury at Georgia called "The Oak Tree." He read the poem frequently, serving as a reminder throughout the recovery process while he was in college. He resurfaced the poem once again following his second knee injury in 2023 and read it on his phone whenever he needed a reminder.

After the first surgery in September, Chubb walked into CrossCountry Mortgage Campus to see Rock. They quickly went to work, trying to gain motion so that Chubb didn't feel stiff, but not push it to where the knee didn't heal. Rock said it was a balance of allowing the knee to heal from the first surgery but also preparing him for the second and the recovery period afterward.

"I joked with him when he came in after his first surgery, I said, 'You got 24 hours, and then it's showtime. We're working,'" Rock recalled. "So, I gave him 24 hours to kind of get his thoughts together more. And then it was off to the races in terms of rehab."

They focused on getting the swelling out of the knee, gaining motion and turning the quadriceps muscle back on. Rock said their goal was to activate the quad, keep him from being stiff and decrease the swelling to allow the knee to heal. Following the second surgery, they started that same process over again.

"You're kind of almost back to Square One, although, the better motion, the better quad tone, the less swelling you have going into the second surgery, usually, the better and the faster they respond after that second surgery," Rock said. "So, you're starting back, you're not weight bearing, you're on crutches, you're getting all that motion, you're getting all the swelling out, you're getting the quad to turn on. And ultimately, from there, it's a slow process of rehab and return to play."

Once they were able to activate his quad, Rock said they began to transition to work in the weight room and building strength. As he got into the weight room, Chubb pressed about when he could return to squatting.

When Chubb was in high school, he loved to spend time in the gym weightlifting. Stepping under the squat bar and feeling the weight on his shoulders and watching the bar bend – it was a feeling he craved once again.

"He kept saying early on from when he went from crutches, when he went to walking with a limp, when he had a brace on, to taking the brace off, he would constantly just say, 'I just need to squat. Once I squat, I'll be good,'" Rock said. "And when he started squatting, it was like a switch that turned in his head of like, all right, I'll be good."

The first time Chubb stepped under the squat rack, Rock said his body shifted to the right; yet to Chubb, it felt like a normal squat. Rock took videos to show Chubb his squatting form and how he had to correct his body.

"I try to give him cues and correct him, even when it looks good, just to kind of give him feedback," Rock said. "He does well with it. He listens. But he'll joke that, 'I've squatted my whole life and you're the first person to correct my squatting form.' And that's kind of our relationship in general."

Chubb stayed in Cleveland and around the Browns throughout the 2023 season and through the initial stages of his rehab as they worked on getting motion and strength back.

He battled through the good days and the bad ones with Rock by his side. There were days when Chubb would come in for rehab and tell Rock he was sore from the previous day's work, so Rock would adjust and modify the plan for that day. There would be other times where Chubb looked strong in a portion of the plan, and Rock would add more to his workload and see how Chubb responded.

Through it all, though, Rock relied on open communication with Chubb and honest feedback, and vice versa.

"There's a lot of times where I was bending his knee, and he was yelling and screaming at me," Rock said. "And he's my friend, and you never want to see your person that you care about in pain or uncomfortable. But knowing, at the end of the day, I have a job for the organization – one, to get the players healthy, and I gave him my word that I was going to get him healthy and do everything I could."

His teammates would see him in the training room or the weight room and notice his progress, giving him high-fives as they passed by. Chubb also worked closely with Jones to focus on upper-body lifting.

Early on, Jones said he would work out with Chubb in the auxiliary weight room, where Chubb could be seated, and they could work on machines. Their workouts provided mental relief from the rehab on his knee, as well as building his upper-body strength. As they transitioned to football-oriented offseason training, Jones said they were on hang cleans, snatch high pulls and Olympic-style lifting.

"We were all ready for him to get going, but we were embracing the process to get back," Jones said. "Just realizing that we are part of a special time in the return. Like we were early in the morning, doing all those things you see emphasized or fantasized about being a top-notch athlete and getting up and grinding."

Once he had the strength, Chubb began the process of re-learning how to run. The first time Chubb stepped onto the grass and ran about 30 yards, with the intention to assess the bend of the knee. Chubb was wearing a knee brace on his first official run, something he had not done before. Rock recorded the run to show Chubb.

"It was ugly," Chubb said. "I wasn't picking my leg up at all. I had a big brace on. But in my mind, when I ran, I knew that I was gonna play again."

Rock agreed. Each time Chubb would run, they saw improvement. They worked through the slight hitch in his gait, his knee not bending, driving his knee and feeling stiff. Rock has videos of every run Chubb has done and the progress he made from his first run, through his time down in Georgia and all the way through the offseason program in the spring of 2024.

"I've seen how he's progressed, and I think the running piece of it, he's just like, 'I'm stiff, I'm stiff, I'm stiff,'" Rock said. "And he'll even tell you now, it takes him some time to warm up and loosen up. He's still stiff. But the progress he's made on that end, what he's had done in his knee – not only through the two surgeries he's had in the last 11 months, but the surgery and the rehab he had with his collegiate injury – it's really impressive."

Chubb also spent part of his recovery time back in Georgia, returning to Cedartown. Ever since he was drafted by the Browns in 2018, Chubb returned to Georgia for a portion of the offseason. He went back to the Cedartown High weight room, and worked out with Mike Worthington, his high school football strength training coach.

He kept to his normal routine, consisting of lifting in the gym, running and drills on the practice field, only adding pool workouts into the rotation of workouts. He increased his running while in Georgia, working with two physical therapists Michael Trammel and Jeff Giddens, as well as Worthington, and didn't have too many limitations on what he could do in the weight room.

"I didn't want to go a season without doing that, because in my mind, it's just kind of mental – me going back home and getting the training I did when I was in high school," Chubb said. "I was doing the same rehab plan here I was doing down there. I was just doing my high school workouts that I like and that I love."

As the months passed and Chubb continued to progress, they moved through different stages of the rehab plan, eventually transitioning to an offseason program style and training him as an offseason player.

Eight months after the initial injury, Chubb was squatting 540 pounds on the squat rack. The first time Chubb squatted 500 pounds, Jones watched as the bar bent and Chubb repped the squat. Jones thought about what Chubb's leg looked like following his two surgeries, and the progress he had made up to that point, and one clear thought ran through his head – "he's back."

It was also a moment of clarity for Chubb.

"That's a milestone, too, I would say," Chubb said. "I got to feel 500 pounds of squat, and even when I'm healthy or not. So that's another thing that let me know I was right where I need to be. And definitely emotional because I am a big squatter, and just be able to get under the bar again and push it up, it was great."

During the offseason program, Chubb, Jones and Rock would start their mornings well before 6 a.m. for his conditioning workouts, with the light of the moon shining down and the red light of the digits on clock on the side of the building flashing the time. They would watch the sun come up as he was doing bag drills and return-to-play dynamics.

They continued those early morning workouts through training camp as Chubb inched closer. Before their meetings started for the day, they would be out on the field stretching, working out, running or doing football drills.

Over the last month, Rock said Chubb progressed to full football speed. In those early morning workouts, he would focus on his rehab, change of direction and individual drills. They simulated individual drills outside; he would sprint and execute his speed work. Rock and Jones would do play drives in which they called a play, and Chubb would run the play.

For Rock, the last month was one of the more rewarding portions of the rehab process as they saw the reality of the last 12 months of work in full force.

"He at no point didn't think he was going to make it. When you rehab an athlete like that, and you work out an athlete like that in Dale's case, like sky's the limit. He at no point wavered of the work. Never shied away from it," Rock said. "Working with someone like him is easy. Everything was for the kid. When you have someone like Nick, that's easy."

Head coach Kevin Stefanski would look out his office window and see Chubb out on the practice fields running and working out.

"Nick's a pretty special football player. He's a pretty special person. I think he embodies a lot of what we want to be as Cleveland Browns," Stefanski said. "From my chair, I get to watch him work and I get to see the fruits of his labor, if you will. […] I've gotten to witness this journey, if you will, back to last year and how hard he's worked."

While Chubb conquered the physical side of his recovery, LaVelle witnessed a deeper shift in her son.

Chubb's entire family spent time up in New York City around Christmas in 2023. As they sat around the dinner table one night, each sharing something meaningful in their lives or pinpointing what's happening in their lives, Chubb shared a sentiment about his injury and recovery with his loved ones.

"He told us after the injury, he said that it was an eye-opener for him, and just how important family is – family has always been important, but it's really important now," she recalled Chubb sharing. "When he said that the injury was different – it was the same type, but it was different – in that it was a reality check. It was a moment where I saw my prayers being answered. It was a moment where he grew up. And so, it was a moment where football is a resource of how he gets his income. But we know the source is our Lord and Savior."

She's watched him battle through the return, not only once, but twice in his life. When he went down on the field that night in Pittsburgh, not only was she concerned about his knee, but she also was worried about Nick's mental state of suffering another knee injury.

Yet, because of his first injury, Nick knew what he needed to do and followed the protocol. And LaVelle said she saw through their conversations how it helped shape his perspective on life and helped him persevere through the injury the second time.

"As important as football is, I think he realized that there's life beyond football," she said. "I believe, just from our conversations, it was like a wakeup call, a reality check."

It was the same sentiment that Zach Chubb felt hearing Nick share with the family on that Christmas trip in 2023.

"I just knew through that, the mental clarity that he had," Zach said. "That was the most important part for me, just knowing he was mentally clear and focused and like, just ready to attack getting back."

When Chubb takes the field for the first time against the Bengals, LaVelle, Zach, Neidra and Juliana Chubb will all be at Huntington Bank Field.

LaVelle rarely misses a game. She's witnessed his highest moments as a football player, as well as both knee injuries. But seeing Chubb run out of the tunnel and step onto the field for the first time following the injury will hold another level of significance.

"He's dedicated to what he does," she said. "Just like his immediate family is important to him, his teammates, the Browns, they're important to him. And so, he supports them on and off the field. He encourages. Standing in the in the wings of things, he's that wind that they need, and he tries to give them whatever he can to encourage them."

His teammates and the fans have felt that support from him. When Chubb released a letter to Cleveland in the Players' Tribune expressing his sentiment and love for the city of Cleveland, fans echoed the love and support back for Chubb. They have been waiting for the return of Chubb since he went down 57 weeks ago.

Jerseys with No. 24 will be sprinkled throughout the stands, and the cheers and chants of his name will ring through stadium.

"He," Jones said, "is Cleveland's Batman."