‘Three-Sack Jack’ is back: Cichy returns to Bucs, healthy and hopeful for 2020 (2024)

TAMPA, Fla. — The last time Jack Cichy made it to the end of a football season healthy, it was magical.

It was the 2015 Holiday Bowl, with Wisconsin going up against USC, and in the third quarter of a tight game, the Badgers’ sophom*ore linebacker sacked Trojans quarterback Cody Kessler on three consecutive plays. Wisconsin would go on to win on a late field goal, and Cichy was forever known as “Three-Sack Jack” after sending his opponent to an unassisted fourth-and-39.

Four times since, his season has started with promise and ended with injury, each time a little more frustrating than the one before it.

2016? Torn pectoral muscle in his seventh game.

2017? Torn ACL in his right knee in August, ending his senior year before it even started.

2018? Torn ACL in his left knee, six games into his rookie year with the Bucs.

2019? A gruesome elbow injury in late September, with 1:06 left in a win against the Rams, another year gone too soon.

It is now 2020 and Jack Cichy (pronounced SITCH-ee) is again healthy, again optimistic, again happy to be back playing football.

“Once I’m back, I really don’t think about the time I missed,” the 24-year-old said, days away from the Bucs’ season opener at the Saints. “The focus shifts to being completely present on the field. That’s where the mindset goes. It’s not to say it’s completely out of sight, out of mind. The first couple of days, strapping the brace up, I definitely think about it. But with how good I feel. how pleased I am to be out there, it’s really not even a thought.”

‘OK. Apparently, my arm’s back in place.’

When last we saw Cichy, he was face down on the field at the Los Angeles Coliseum, his right arm grotesquely bent underneath him at a 90-degree angle in the wrong direction.

The Bucs had just scored for a 55-40 lead with a minute left, clinching a statement win over the defending NFC champions. On the ensuing kickoff, as Cichy ran down the field in coverage, the game all but over, Rams running back Malcolm Brown tackled him low, picked him up in the air and slammed his body to the ground. Cichy put his right arm down to catch his fall, and it bent backward under his body, dislocating the elbow.

“I went into shock right away, but when I was face down, with my arm like that, I was very much awake,” he said Tuesday, just three weeks shy of a year later. “The trainers said ‘What’s up? What’s up?’ and I said ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! But something’s not right.’ They said ‘His elbow, we’ve got to put it back,’ and they did. I was in shock, so I felt it, but it wasn’t painful. They set it back, I sat up, kind of gathered myself. I was like, ‘OK. Apparently, my arm’s back in place.’ I have some pictures of the bruising afterwards. It was pretty gnarly, to be honest with you.”

Brown was penalized for holding on the play but was not fined. At first, it appeared that Cichy would be spared the worst news, as X-rays at the game somehow showed no broken bones in his arm. Bucs coach Bruce Arians announced he might be sidelined as little as two to four weeks.

“If you’re not physically and mentally prepared for what life is going to throw at you, then you’re just going to crumble, And then, you’re no good to nobody”. @davidgoggins #canthurtme pic.twitter.com/K6kHNB3kTF

— Jack Cichy (@jackCICHY) September 30, 2019

“If you’re not physically and mentally prepared for what life is going to throw at you, then you’re just going to crumble, and then, you’re no good to nobody,” Cichy wrote on Twitter, quoting author and motivational speaker David Goggins, a former Navy Seal and ultra-marathon runner who, among other things, once held the Guinness Book of World Records mark for pull-ups in 24 hours with … 4,030.

For weeks, Cichy was the first one in the training room each morning, getting treatment, checking on his progress. His hopes of a healthy return last season never materialized. The soft tissue around his elbow wasn’t healing, and it was determined he would need full reconstructive surgery on his elbow.

“I was pretty devastated,” he said. “I was doing everything I could, and it was so out of my control. That made it one of the tougher rehabs, just because of the circ*mstances of it.”

His season was indeed over, and Cichy spent six hours in surgery on Oct. 30, posting a photo on Instagram a week later that showed his still-swollen elbow with twin surgical seams, one on each side, a lifelong memento of the latest curveball life had thrown his way.

Ouch. Get-well wishes to Bucs LB Jack Cichy, who shows off a two-seamer as he recovers from elbow surgery. pic.twitter.com/noZkxv83yi

— Greg Auman (@gregauman) November 9, 2019

By February, his elbow felt normal again, and then COVID-19 arrived, putting everything on hold, players isolated from their teammates and coaches, left to work on their own. Strangely enough, it ended up being exactly what Cichy needed.

“The blessing in disguise that the whole quarantine was, once the world shut down, what else am I going to do besides diet and train,” he said. “It was a nice way to really prepare myself for whatever unknown this season was going to bring. We had so much time on our hands that a lot of guys really dove in and went the extra mile with all the time. Once we got to camp, there wasn’t much lag time. We hit the ground running.”

Cichy, leaner, stronger and maybe five pounds heavier at 230, went into training camp in July confident in his health but unsure where he fit in the Bucs’ plans. Noah Dawkins, a waiver claim who had stepped into Cichy’s role on special teams in the second half of last season, was now competing for the same job, as was Chapelle Russell, a seventh-round draft pick from Temple who himself had bounced back from two ACL tears in college.

“I definitely didn’t think I had anything in the bag, but I felt I probably had an advantage this year just because of the uncertainty of all of it, how limited this camp was,” Cichy said. “My experience would help me, but it was a grind, like usual. You have to roll with the punches.”

Two weeks before final cuts, not knowing if the Bucs would keep four or five inside linebackers, Cichy was mentioned last when Arians talked about the three young players competing for the last spot or two.

“The rest of the guys on the inside, it’s up for grabs,” Arians said. “Noah, Chapelle, Jack, whoever is in there, it’s all special teams. Like I said, if you’re not a starter, you better be a hell of a special teams player if you want to get a hat.”

Without preseason games to impress coaches in the past month, Cichy focused on consistency in practice, both in making plays on the second-string defense and also on special teams, where he worked on all four major units: punt, punt return, kickoff and kickoff return. The very role that led to his injury would also lead to his NFL survival.

When cuts were announced Saturday, Dawkins was waived and Russell earned a spot on the Bucs’ practice squad, but it was Cichy who made the cut as the fourth and final inside linebacker, a key backup to starters Lavonte David and Devin White.

Arians said Cichy made the cut this fall because of his work ethic and his ability to do what’s asked of him, whether on defense or special teams.

“He plays really, really hard, and he does everything the way you ask him to do it,” Arians said. “Hopefully, knock on wood, he can stay healthy for once, but he’s a heck of a high-motor guy that does everything exactly the way it’s coached.”

USC should consider blocking Jack Cichy with their entire offensive line. https://t.co/xhOJRdtPBj pic.twitter.com/k6YbB9gRse

— SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) December 31, 2015

‘I was pretty resentful for a while’

Resilience has never been a problem for Cichy, who went to Wisconsin as a 185-pound walk-on, getting cameos in four games and a single tackle his first season and redshirting his second before truly finding himself and making an impact in his third year in Madison. Much the same way, he now enters his third NFL season in Tampa, having learned as much from the sidelines as on the field.

Cichy is in a good place, physically and mentally, but admits that wasn’t always the case. Rehab isn’t something you want to become an expert at, and though this latest one took half as long as his ACL recoveries, it took time for his emotions to heal as well.

“Unfortunately, I was pretty resentful for a while,” he said. “I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. It seemed so unfair. It’s kind of how it goes.”

The kids love @jackCICHY! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/hxgOQHuR9w

— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) August 12, 2019

Cichy has played a total of 17 games in the last four years, but if he can stay healthy and the Bucs make the playoffs, he can match that in the next four months, and perhaps even squeeze in a few more.

He was relegated to watching on the sideline last year as the Bucs defense went from a struggling first half, giving up more than 30 points per game, to a vastly improved second half, getting turnovers and taking control as young players got comfortable in a new scheme. He said the continuity of having so many players back this year, with the same coaches in the same system, is a rare plus the Bucs can take advantage of.

“There’s usually not much carryover from year to year,” he said. “But with the guys we have on this defense, and really with the coaches, from the first day of camp, they were really instilling this attention to detail that’s going to be necessary to even try to replicate the success we had last year. We’re going to have to be one of the most detail-oriented teams and defenses in the league, but as camp went on, guys took to that more and more. It helps when you have the vets that we do.”

He points to inside linebacker Lavonte David and to other veterans such as outside linebacker Jason Pierre-Paul and defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh as leaders who set an example for younger players to follow, in meetings and in practices.

“You see those guys just so detailed in their gaps, in their hand placement, in all that stuff, it’s easy to want to follow suit,” he said. “You’re like, ‘I want to be as detailed as they are. I don’t want to let them down. I want them to be able to trust me like I trust them.”

Cichy had learned all he needed about appreciating opportunities and second chances two major injuries ago, when he wrote a first-person piece for The Players’ Tribunereflecting on the end of his college career. “I’m going to take a risk and give it everything I have and see what happens,” he wrote, months before the Bucs took him in the sixth round of the NFL Draft.

Four major injuries in four years have given Cichy even more of a daily urgency and immediacy, a sharp focus on now, this practice, this drill, this play. Even in the uneasy months of pandemic, not knowing if there would be a season to return to, he didn’t look past that day’s workout, only what was directly in front of him.

“At the start of camp, you want to know how it’s going to end up, how the 53 is going to look. You just want to know,” he said. “The thing about training camp, and about COVID, is you just have to ride it out. You have to put your time in, you just have to see what’s going to happen. You and I know, there are so many things that can happen from Week 1 to Week 8 to Week 16 to the playoffs. Balls can bounce this way or that way. To try and look that far down the road, that was my problem in March and a little bit at the beginning of camp. You stop that, you focus on the now. What’s nice about being back on the field, you can focus on that.”

(Photo: Cliff Welch / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)