Andre Anthony’s Approach: ‘Do the Most’

Andre Anthony’s long LSU playing career came to an abrupt end last September, as he tore an ACL on a non-contact play against Central Michigan. He had first arrived in Baton Rouge in 2016, taking a redshirt year and then missing the next season thanks to a different knee injury. Anthony then played four more years for LSU, though the last one as a grad student was only three games long to his season-ending mishap.

Now Anthony is back on the football field just a few days shy of eight months after his injury against the Chippewas, as he’s taking part in a rookie mini-camp with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Buccaneers selected him in the seventh round of the 2022 NFL Draft after not addressing the outside linebacker position in the first six rounds. Anthony is not yet fully recovered – he expects to be full-go by the start of training camp – but he is taking part in drills and he has a strategy for making a strong first impression while not yet physically at his peak.

“Do the most,” said Anthony of his approach to this stage of his transition from college to the pros. “Do what you can do, and what you can do go 100 percent at it, regardless of the situation of where you got picked. Do what you can. And my situation, coming in hurt, just do what you can, and when you can do something go hard at it so they can see, ‘Okay, he’s trying and he’s steady developing.’ Showing that you know the playbook so when it’s time to get out there [they say], ‘Okay, we can trust that he knows what he’s doing.’ So it’s not just going out there and seeing what you can do physically.”

Anthony’s 2017 experience with a similar injury helped him get through his current recovery process, both mentally and physically. It was a tough blow to absorb, though. After leading the Tigers with 5.5 sacks as a senior in 2020, he had gotten off to a blazing start in what should have been a showcase season for NFL scouts. Anthony was among national leaders in sacks (3.5) and tackles for loss (4.0)…