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Hall of Famer [20518]
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Between my sophomore and senior years in HS...
May 1, 2016, 9:21 AM
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...I suffered: at least two concussions, a cracked rib, a cracked wrist, and more strains and sprains in my ankles, knees, and back than I can count. The worst was when I broke my knee...I actually avoided a more serious ACL/MCL tear because my knee snapped at the growth plate, and a broken knee, believe it or not, is just a whole lot better than a torn ACL. I did suffer some tearing in the meniscus and had to have the knee scoped. That was fun.
That's pretty typical stuff, for somebody who plays football. (I was playing soccer as well.) I played through almost all of it except for maybe the two months when I was on crutches for the broken knee. You do that too, when you play football.
The reason I mention this is because of the amount of hate I've seen Jayron Kearse getting lately. The general invective seems to be he somehow "checked out" and decided to coast through the last half of his junior year to avoid injury, letting all of Clemson down thereby. People really seem to believe it. The reality is almost certainly different...when you see a guy playing really effectively, and then all of a sudden he isn't, especially in football you can almost count on the fact that he's hurt. And there's a bunch of the kind of injuries where even though you can technically keep playing, you aren't going to be the same. Especially if you've got some kind of tweaked back, which really restricts your mobility and range of motion, or if you've got some sort of injury where you just aren't trusting your knee or ankle and it ends up looking like you're running on eggshells.
You can try to gut through a lot of things in football, and players do, but when you see a player's game drop like his did, the reason is almost always debilitating injury, not "lack of heart".
Just sayin'.
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Orange Blooded [3820]
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don't worry the comments.. we're all "family" here....***
May 1, 2016, 9:24 AM
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110%er [6662]
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Re: Between my sophomore and senior years in HS...
May 1, 2016, 9:28 AM
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While I agree with you Quoz on some level, and while I don't hate Kearse for any reason, he did play to NOT get hurt the last part of the season, thereby not giving his all and it showed. Hate might not be the right word, but he could have made a difference if the $$$$$$$$$ hadnt got to him.
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Hall of Famer [20518]
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Re: Between my sophomore and senior years in HS...
May 1, 2016, 9:34 AM
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I'm saying he was already probably hurt, friend.
He looked like a blown player, to my eyes. What that tells you is he probably had some sort of back or knee injury where he just couldn't move like he wanted to, and like he was moving pre-injury. He never got better, never turned it "back on", even for short spurts...guys who are having motivation problems tend to be erratic in their effort level, whereas he just plain looked like a different guy after midseason. That tells you he was hurt, not a wuss, and not "protecting" himself.
JMO.
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CU Medallion [58367]
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I have not, and am not hating on Kearse at all, as we have
May 1, 2016, 12:23 PM
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no idea what he may have been going through. While I can't rule out the possibility that he was just slacking off, it's wrong to assume that, as many have done.
I still have a problem with the way this has played out, however.
If he has been injured or banged up, I can understand why they would keep it quiet during the season, to keep opponents from targeting him. That begs the question though, why do they not cover up all injuries; we had a lot of players who played with injuries that were made very public and ran the risk of becoming targets. Furthermore, if Jayron's drop-off was indeed due to injuries, why not reveal it after the season, as an explanation to everyone who was wondering what the heck was going on, and put the negative talk to rest once and for all, for Jayron's sake?
I'm not gonna beat up on Jayron; he's a freakish talent and will always be a Tiger. I'll always be pulling for him. I'm just not sure I buy the injury explanation altogether either at this point. If that was the case, I'd love to hear it from Jayron or the coaches, and don't understand why we would not have heard about it at this point.
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Scout Team [179]
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Re: Between my sophomore and senior years in HS...
May 1, 2016, 12:29 PM
[ in reply to Re: Between my sophomore and senior years in HS... ] |
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I think it was a bit of both him being hurt AND protecting himself (but not for as selfish of reasons some have been led to believe).
Could it be he was hurt and protecting himself from further injury so that he wouldn't leave the Clemson secondary with a glaring weakness that teams could more easily expose?
More on exposing the D: if a player's hurt, it's best for the team if no one knows about the injury, otherwise opposing teams will not only look to create mismatches vs you, they'll flat out target the injured part of the body in hopes of completely eliminating said player from the game.
Could've subconsiously been a bit of both injury and protecting the CLEMSON TEAM, and perhaps a bit of his NFL stock. But I highly doubt it was soley the latter, because as Q mentioned, Kearse NOT ONCE in the second half of the season "accidently" hit another top gear of speed - because he was clearly incapable of doing so, likely because of his masking injuries.
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110%er [9298]
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Re: Between my sophomore and senior years in HS...
May 1, 2016, 9:32 AM
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I agree - I think he clearly had some sort of injury. Will be surprised if this doesn't come out soon. Competitive players normally do not voluntarily stop playing at a high level (well the Clown did) - especially given the circumstances of Clemson's season last year and what he personally had on the line in the draft.
Message was edited by: gville76®
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Orange Blooded [4036]
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Re: Between my sophomore and senior years in HS...
May 1, 2016, 12:03 PM
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Not for nothing but Clowney turned out to have pretty serious knee issues, so it is possible you could say the same of him. I think this is unlikely given his run-ins with Spurrier, but still possible. I can't see much upside to hiding injury issues from the public though. If you hide it and get $$$ because of it, that could be construed as fraud.
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Hall of Famer [23100]
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All true, but Dabo said in a preser in Nov that they had
May 1, 2016, 12:12 PM
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some more worried about their draft positions than they were the team and they needed to start performing better.
Later in Spring practice, Tank also said that and that it would not be a problem this season.
Pretty sure if an injury was involved, the GM's would have known.
As for you. I feel for you, as we get older, those places we injured growing up are the first places arthritis sets up.
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110%er [5699]
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That's all well and good, but he still dropped in the draft.
May 1, 2016, 1:55 PM
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He went from a supposed 3rd round projection to almost not being drafted at all.
He was invited to the combine, they only hand those out to players they think will make teams.
Granted his combine performance was poor, but was it bad enough to fall to being one of the last picks of draft?
Something happened that made NFL GMs and coaches fill uncomfortable with drafting him. I don't think you can deny that.
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Orange Blooded [2937]
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amen to original poster. Besides coaches
May 1, 2016, 2:03 PM
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Can tell when a player is sandbagging or taking plays off
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