Falcons safety Ricardo Allen primed for comeback season

ATLANTA (FOX 5 Atlanta) - After a few minutes, the tingling feeling in Ricardo Allen's foot still wasn't going away. That's when he knew.

"I could still feel it," Allen said in the Falcons' first installment of their "Comeback Series," released this afternoon. "The numbness, the tinging sensation wasn't going away. I was like, 'this might actually be something.'"

Instead of having the breakout year he was hoping for in 2018, Allen was sidelined with a torn Achilles tendon.

"It's very weird because it ain't no pain. It ain't no pain or nothing," he recalled. "It's like a pop and then it goes away. The rest of your body feels normal. It's just you don't have a connection like from your foot to your leg."

In the first installment of the Falcons series, Allen became emotional talking about how he felt his absence negatively affected his teammates.

"I knew other people was going to need me," he said. "Like, I was put in a position to help other people, and that's like my biggest thing."

Allen's wife, Gracie, said the time frame between her husband's injury and his surgery was the most difficult stretch of the setback.

"There was all of a sudden this hope that was put back into us," she said of the moments after Allen's surgery. "It was like, 'We're on the way up now.' Because when you're just stagnant and you know you're injured, and it's not getting better, it's still there. And then you get your surgery and you're healed, and it's reinforced, now you know every day is one day closer (to returning)."

The second part of Allen's comeback story will be released by the Falcons on Wednesday afternoon. Stay tuned to FOX 5 on air and online for continuing coverage.