BATON ROUGE, La. — K’Lavon Chaisson had to report to camp in a few days, but first he needed to jump out of an airplane. Before he returned to football, before what might be his breakout year, he returned to Houston and went skydiving. He spread his massive wings out wide like a bird, opened his mouth and shouted to the heavens as the wind shot into his face from 10,000 feet with no fear, not a single worry in the world.



Or how about in the days and weeks after he went down in AT&T Stadium with a torn ACL last year against Miami, ending his season before it really started, not feeling the fear that normally comes with the journey ahead. “I was just blessed to have an injury that small, in my eyes,” he says now. “I could have had a Ryan Shazier injury.” From a hospital bed post-surgery, he tweeted “Who’s running the 5k with me tomorrow?”



Or with eye black smeared across his face moments after his return...