More help could be coming to the Washington Commanders' linebackers in the near future.

After missing the last bit of training camp and the first four games of the season, fifth-round pick Jordan Magee was designated to return to practice on Wednesday and was a full participant. The team now has three weeks to decide what to do with Magee, whether that be to return to Injured Reserve and be done for the year or be placed on the active roster.

Magee doesn't know what move the team will make, but he hopes it will be the latter, and it looks like he is trending in that direction, too.

"I feel good and I'm ready to go," Magee said outside the Commanders' locker room on Wednesday. "Just waiting on the coaches, just waiting on the word, and I'm gonna keep going every day."

Magee, a standout at Temple and one of the few to receive a coveted single-digit jersey while playing for the program, had a strong start to training camp and quickly earned reps with the starting defense because of his speed, quickness and athleticism. "He plays square, and he's got real speed," coach Dan Quinn said of Magee, and the rookie was placed as the second middle linebacker behind Bobby Wagner on the first unofficial depth chart.

Magee's training camp was cut short because of a knee injury suffered in the team's first preseason game against the New York Jets. Quinn confirmed on Aug. 19 that Magee had a procedure to repair a meniscus injury earlier that week, which led to him being placed on Injured Reserve. The injury was not considered season-ending, and while Quinn said Magee would be back at some point during the season, he didn't want to put a timeline on his return.

Six weeks later, Magee is back on the practice field, and he's focused on getting "back into the swing of things."

"Homing in on skills and things that I've been out of for...close to two months, so just trying to get back to 100%," Magee said.

The past four weeks have been difficult for Magee as he's had to watch from the sideline as the Commanders have become one of league's hottest teams with a 3-1 start. It has been a different sensation for Magee, who was part of a Temple program that hasn't won more than three games in a season since 2019.

Magee tried to stay engaged by learning as much as possible and peppering his teammates with questions. He asked veterans like Wagner and Frankie Luvu about the different looks they saw on the field and their different blitzing styles. He's also gotten advice from Mykal Walker, who has spent most of the season on special teams -- a unit that Magee will likely be part of when he returns.

"Just taking mental reps," Magee said.

Magee's potential return could be coming at an opportune time for a defense that seems to be making incremental progress each week. The unit took its biggest step last Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals by holding their seventh-ranked offense to 14 points and 296 yards. Kyler Murray was sacked four times, including one on a fourth-and-1 at the end of the first half, and his offense was limited to four third-down conversions on 11 attempts.

Magee is looking forward to being part of the group again.

"[Defensive coordinator] Coach [Joe] Whitt is calling great plays," Magee said. "We'll continue to put it together as a team and play complementary football."

Wagner and Luvu are starting to get more comfortable in Washington's scheme, as shown by their fifth- and sixth-ranked positional grades from Pro Football Focus in Week 4, but the defense could still use Magee, who had 235 stops, 31 tackles for loss and eight sacks in his college career. He could be useful in shoring up Washington's efforts in stopping the ground game, as they're giving up 136.5 yards per game.

That won't happen until Magee is fully healthy, though, and Quinn still needs to see more from the linebacker.

"These guys have been out for a while and so that's why you have the extended time to get them ready to play," Quinn said when asked about the possibility of Magee, Marcus Mariota and Efe Obada's -- both of whom were also designated to practice on Wednesday -- return to play. "And so that's where we will go...and each one will be its own individual case, too."