CHARLOTTE — Derrick Brown had to beg for the three snaps he got last week, and he might have been lucky to get those.

But make no mistake, when the season starts, he's going to take as many as they'll give him, because that's what he's used to.

The Pro Bowl defensive tackle is pretty tired of easing his way back, but it's something he's had to get used to after the knee injury in last year's opener, which cost him the rest of the season.

So if that meant badgering head coach Dave Canales to get the action he did, that's something Brown is willing to do.

"I think it was a lot of pestering all week leading up to that," Brown said, laughing but very serious. "I definitely sat on the sideline and a high anticipation the week before for the Cleveland game and didn't practice, so to get back out there was awesome.

"It's been, it's been a long nine months to say the least, so, just to know what it took to get back to this point and then being able to just, you know, enjoy the moment. . . . That was a little teaser out there, but you know, I'll take what I can get."

A light workload is definitely new to Brown, who is used to playing a ton of snaps.

He played a mind-boggling 940 snaps in 2023, which was 89 percent of the team's total. Defensive linemen rarely play that high a percentage of a team's total snaps, especially the 320-pound ones. The year before, he logged a mere 870 (75 percent).

So the 60 he played in New Orleans last year was normal (91 percent of that game's total), except those were the last ones he took in a game until Saturday.

"It's very hard," Brown admitted of the management of his workload, which he's always taken pride in. "Especially coming back into it, just having certain percentages going into the days, I mean it's been really hard. I always want to just push myself to you know where practice is so hard that you know I'm about to pass out, so that's one of those things where I think I've learned. I mean, they haven't steered me astray. So, I'm going to keep following the plan, and you know we'll go from there.

"Definitely pushing myself right now to get back in shape, and be able to get ready to go. I don't know, man. I just think it's crazy to go from being nine or 10 weeks of non-weight bearing, and then trying to walk again, and then get to the point of you're running, and then starting to try to build your stamina up. I mean, it's tough."

The good news for Brown, and the defense as a whole, is that they brought friends in to support him.

By investing in Tershawn Wharton and Bobby Brown III this offseason, they've added depth to the position, so that he might not have to play every single rep.

Canales said they'd "play it by ear" when the season started, but he also knows how persuasive Brown can be. He's also earned those reps by being one of the league's dominant defensive tackles, setting a single-season record for tackles by a lineman in 2023, en route to his first Pro Bowl.

He's a great player, so we'd love to have him out there the whole time," Canales said. "We'll see how he responds as we continue to push his volume, and then we'll have to kind of just make that decision week to week in terms of how much he plays and how we're rotating that group.

"But it is a deep group and we love all those guys, there's veteran guys, there's young guys that can help as well, so we'll kind of see as we go."

Brown said he hoped they'd reach a point where he could push past some limits, if it meant they were in close games late and needed him. And even with all the new help, they're going to have to have a good reason for him not to be there.

"I always want to be on the field, though," he said with another laugh. "That's how you hang around for a little while in the league. So I always want to be on the field, but it's going to be up to the coaches.

"I think there's a plan in place right now, so I'll play as much as I can. Hopefully it's a three-quarter plan and if the game's on line in the fourth quarter to kind of let me burn up a little bit, so we'll see."

He said getting into training camp, and taking an early rep against Damien Lewis convinced him the knee was sound, and that allowed him to play freely enough that he could reasonably lobby for more and more.

"When I came back on the first day of practice and I was going against Damien and kind of moved a little bit, but then I like put the leg in the ground and I was like, it works," he recalled. "So that was one of those moments where I was like, I'm good, so I haven't thought about it since."

Of course, the simple act of participating in Houston was enough, because it meant he was engaged. Brown loves his routine — and it's part of the reason he's good at his job — so being with the team at the hotel, in the meetings, on the practice field, was big for him.

That's also why last year was so difficult at a personal level, since he wasn't able to be on the sidelines for games until he could move well enough to protect himself, which was late in the year.

"It sucked, to be honest, it did," he said. "It was awful, I had to watch the game at home at first until I could start walking again, and that was awful. I spent a lot of time yelling at my TV. But other than that, it was great.

"I think I just truly take everything from that adversity of the injury last year, and it just makes me appreciate the game so much more."