FARGO — It was exactly 12 months last week when life took a wrong turn for North Dakota State defensive end Greg Menard. More precisely, his knee took a wrong turn.

Menard tore his ACL during a non-contact drill in the first week of fall practice for the 2017 season, an injury that has been a day-to-day battle for him to return to the form that made him one of the top players in Division I FCS in 2016. It’s nothing new in athletics, rehabbing an ACL, but that didn’t make it any easier.

At first, Menard said, it was hard just to walk. That morphed into running and the ability to make some cuts.

“And then you finally get back to this and then you’re wondering if you’ll ever be the same,” he said. “But once you get going, it’s like nothing ever happened.”

Will Menard be the same? He said that was his first thought upon returning to practice this fall.

His season two years ago bordered on dominating. He finished with 62 tackles, 15 for lost yardage, 11 quarterbacks sacks, two fumble recoveries and a blocked kick. There were games when his quick 6-foot-2, 239-pound frame got around offensive tackles virtually at will.

He’s not much heavier this fall at 240, but he feels he’s stronger having to work on his upper body strength while his knee went through the healing process.

In fact, he said the day after he was injured, he was back in the weight room with former Bison teammate Brad Ambrosius.

“I’m just trying to take that into this season,” Menard said.

He’s been cleared for full practice contact. He said he no longer even thinks about the knee and about the only hassle is a knee brace that occasionally slides down his leg.

“The stuff you thought you would forget, you didn’t forget,” Menard said. “It was a little clumsy at first, the legs were a little heavy, but that’s from not used to playing.”

He’ll get the benefit of a deep defensive line that will allow Menard to rotate plays — and not put so much stress on the knee, especially early in the season. NDSU returns plenty of experience at defensive end with seniors Stanley Jones and Caleb Butler, junior Derrek Tuszka and sophomore Logan McCormick.

“We’re fortunate to have four starters at defensive end in my opinion,” said Bison head coach Chris Klieman. “All four are starters for us, it doesn’t matter how we list them. They know they’ll play an awfully lot of snaps for us. We’re always going to rotate defensive linemen. How it’s listed doesn’t matter because they’re all going to play about the same amount of snaps.”

There could also be times in passing situations where one or two of the defensive ends could play inside to get a better pass rush. In that case, Butler and Tuszka would be likely candidates.

“That’s important for all of us because they can’t focus on one guy,” Menard said. “Everyone is out there flying around and they have to worry about every person having a speed rush. They have to bring in a running back to help block. It’s fun to have the small guys out there running around and doing some exotic blitzes, or whatever we can scheme up.”