BALTIMORE _ "Why are you running so fast?"
Matt Skura heard the question and didn't know what to say, really. He was running again, and it felt like a race, and that was enough. In an early-morning workout last month in Charlotte, N.C., all the Ravens center wanted to do was put one foot in front of the other faster than he had in months. The only competition was his very pregnant wife, and now somewhat annoyed training partner, Emma.
"Where's that been?" she recalled asking him later. It's a comforting thought now. Every day of rehabilitation seems to bring Matt closer to the player Emma and the NFL knew him to be last season, before a left knee injury in a Week 12 blowout ended his season and threatened his blossoming career.
When Matt started to jog again this spring, Emma said he looked like "an old man that's being chased." Then Matt started to run, then sprint, then change directions. On June 16, he passed the Ravens' vaunted conditioning test; coach John Harbaugh called the progress "remarkable."
Less than five weeks from the expected start of training camp, one of the Ravens' biggest offseason questions is closer than ever to resolution. In an interview last week, Matt said he feels "probably as close to 100 percent as I possibly can." Trainer Jay Johnson, who's worked with him in Charlotte since late February, said he has "no doubt in my mind" that Matt will be ready to report to Owings Mills by late July.
The "full feeling of reward," as Emma put it, won't be realized until then. It's one thing to sprint past your wife in a driveway workout session. It's another to take on a 330-pound defensive tackle in full pads. That, Emma said, will be the "big, deep-breath exhale that we both will be really looking forward to."
Matt and Emma had already shared so much, the good times and the bad and the moments in between. They'd started a family and imagined a future in Baltimore. But it's this offseason, in all its abundant weirdness and adversity, that has revealed the enduring strength of a relationship forged over a decade ago. "They're on another level," Johnson said.
Twice a week, he arrives at the home of a family in transition. Matt is rehabilitating his first serious injury. Emma's second child is due in August. The coronavirus pandemic has kept normalcy out of reach. As their 2-year-old daughter, Emerson, sleeps in, Matt and Emma prepare together for the long day ahead.
"I get there, they get warm, they ask what the workout is and they get to work," Johnson said. "No complaining, no nothing."
