"Kris Jenkins has a problem staying healthy"

Maybe they mean staying at a certain weight or his previous injuries.

 

Between his weight problems and his nearly 2 full seasons missed to injury, I don't think it's an unfair question.

 

I think it's a mixture of things. A lot of people now adays are unable to form their own opinions so they listen to the media or their friends and then make up their own conclusions. Then someone else takes that guys conclusion and bases his opinions off of that. Let's take a recent rumor about our newly aquired QB Erick Ainge (whom I am am 100% indifferent to)

Guy #1: You would think a guy that size would have a stronger arm
Guy #2: Yeah his arm is pretty weak for someone that size
Guy #3: Erick Ainge lacks arm strength
Guy #4: Ainge = Chad Pennington part 2 no arm strength whatsoever

The media only fuels these rumors by not knowing what the fuck they're talking about in the first place so now we are all dumbasses.

 

I think reporters jsut repeat what they've said in the past, so it takes a little while for them to realize it's not true anymore. Hopefully not true anymore.

 

Injury prone imo is someone that repeatedly misses games due to multiple or reoccuring injuries. He had a bad injury missed significant time due to recovery and has been dependable ever since. I have no worries about him.

 

I'm guessing this is what is being referenced:

http://bestbucsblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/injury-report-why-it-sucks-to-tear.html

2005-09-12
Injury Report: Why it sucks to tear your ACL

Two big injuries in the NFC yesterday, Packer's receiver Javon Walker and Panther's defensive tackle Kris Jenkins. Both players tore their ACLs and will be out for the rest of the season.

Tearing your ACL is one of the worst, and most common, sports injuries. It takes at least a year to rehab from the injury, and it's going to require surgery and months of rehab before you can get back to playing shape.

A buddy of mine tore his ACL our senior year of high school. He tore on a run-of-the-mill play during our football practice, and at the time he didn't really know how bad it was. At first it felt really bad, but you can still walk with a torn ACL, so he just figured it was a sprain and sat out the rest of practice. If he had tried to run any more plays in practice, he could have torn up more muscles in his knee and risked never being able to walk again.

Anyway, these injuries are bad news for Brett Favre and the Panther's Super Bowl band wagon (which includes myself).

Besides getting screwed out of the big NFL contract Green Bay told Walker he had to play for this season, this news pretty much guarantees the Packers will be competing with the Bears for the worst team in the division. Walker had emerged into the home run threat for the Packers, and stretched the field for the Packer's power running game.

Jenkins is the second best player on one of the top five defensive lines in the NFL. His absence from the d-line due to injuries last season was part of the reason the Panthers started out 1-7. I still think the Panthers can make it back to the Super Bowl this season (remember Booger McFarland missed the second half of the Buc's Super Bowl season), but the road to Super Bowl XL will be much more difficult for Carolina. All of the sudden the Eagles look like a good bet to repeat as NFC Champs.

 

A different article:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-146959779.html

Kris' crossroad: after battling injuries, alcoholism and depression, Kris Jenkins faces two new challenges--reclaiming his role as the NFL's best run stuffer and helping the Panthers get to the Super Bowl.(NFL)

It is lunchtime at Bank of America Stadium and Panthers defensive tackle Kris Jenkins is creating what appears to be the ultimate mismatch.

The buffet line is waiting and Jenkins' weight looks to be well north of 340 pounds. He fills a Styrofoam bowl with lettuce and tops it with a few drops of low-fat dressing. A row of meats and pasta is ahead, but Jenkins veers out of line, reaches into a cooler and grabs a bottle of water.

"This is one of my six meals for the day," he says with a laugh.

Jenkins isn't joking as much as he's chuckling at the irony. As he attempts to come back from his second major injury in two years, he has become serious about what he eats and drinks. That was not the case before. Far from it.

While establishing himself as perhaps the NFL's best run stuffer in 2002 and 2003, Jenkins pretty much subscribed to the Babe Ruth training regimen. He ate a lot. He drank a lot. The drinking, in particular, increased after Jenkins went on injured reserve with a season-ending shoulder injury in October 2004. After battling depression and making only a half-hearted comeback attempt, he returned for the 2005 season but suffered a torn ACL in the opener.

That led to rumblings around the league that Jenkins might be done or that he never would be the player he had been before the injuries. After all, there had been concerns about Jenkins' maturity, work ethic, weight and attitude since he came out of Maryland as a second-round pick in 2001. He was dubbed "The Big Kid" by Panthers media members and could be as playful as a child one minute and as insolent as Barry Bonds the next. In recent months, more than one team official has started a conversation about Jenkins with a phrase like, "If Kris comes back healthy and with his head straight ... "

Jenkins, 26, is at a crossroad--and maybe the Panthers are, too. After coming within a game of the Super Bowl last season, they have gone all-out this offseason to try to take the next step. Jenkins' injury history caused them to sign two free-agent tackles, Maake Kemoeatu and Damione Lewis, as insurance. They filled other holes by signing receiver Keyshawn Johnson and drafting running back DeAngelo Williams.

But Jenkins is the biggest piece of all--and he certainly is the biggest question mark.

Mention all that to Jenkins--and the rumbling that follows is not from a hungry stomach.

"When I came into the league, nobody thought I had a shot in hell of being the best defensive tackle in the league," he says. "I've always had to battle and fight the odds. I've always done it, and I'm still confident I can do it again. I just want to be the best while I'm doing it."

Jenkins swallows a few more pieces of lettuce, then talks about how he's approaching this comeback differently from the last one. He tells a story to demonstrate how serious he is. He was in New York the night before the draft in April, and he attended a party that included some other NFL players and some soon-to-be high draft picks. The old Kris Jenkins walked into the nightclub. A new one, he says, walked out 25 minutes later.

"There were models and all sorts of celebrities all over the players," Jenkins says. "I started thinking, 'Why am I here? I don't like this. I don't need this.' I left and went back to the hotel and went to sleep."

In the past, Jenkins admitted he drank too much in the months after his 2004 shoulder injury. But he also insisted it wasn't a problem and that he wasn't an alcoholic. "Now I might feel like, yeah, I was. When you're there, you want to say, 'No, I wasn't an alcoholic.' But you drink a bottle of Grand Marnier in a night, I don't care who you are, that's an alcoholic."

Jenkins, who had never suffered a serious injury before, says he turned to alcohol to deal with the sudden isolation while missing the final 12 games of the season. He also admits he suffered from depression.

"You hear everybody tell you the stories how you have to learn to walk away because football is going to end at some point," he says. "But that's like somebody telling you that it hurts when you take a 40-caliber pistol and you shoot your hand with it. You're not going to know how that feels until you take that 40-caliber pistol and you shoot yourself in the hand. That's why I was depressed."

In the cloud of alcohol and depression, Jenkins says he loafed through the rehab of his shoulder; sometimes he didn't even bother coming to sessions, never mind that he was fined several thousand dollars by the team. Sometime last offseason, with his weight around 375, Jenkins realized he wasn't making a lot of progress toward getting back on the field. He began a starvation diet and slowed the drinking.

"You have to realize at some point, OK, you're drinking entirely too much and you need to stop that," Jenkins says. "That's the best thing that's happened to me in these two years because I learned that I don't need football. I can still be the person that I am and the people that are closest to me are still going to be there whether I'm playing or not. My life is going to go on."

Jenkins trimmed his weight close to 335 by the end of camp and appeared ready as the season started. Then came the torn ACL. This time, Jenkins didn't disappear: "I felt like going right back to the same thing, but I was like, 'I can't do that again.'"

As the Panthers went on without him, compiling an 11-5 record and advancing to the NFC championship game, Jenkins says he had an occasional glass of wine at home but always was in bed by 10 p.m. so he could get to the team's facility early the next day for rehab.

Jenkins received an external push from a support group narrowed to include only the people he trusted most. He didn't seek counseling about his drinking or depression. "I'm not going to pay somebody to talk with me," Jenkins says. "That's what my Daddy is for."

Immediately after Jenkins' knee surgery, Darmone moved in with his son to assist him and be a sounding board. Jenkins' tight circle also included Cullen, former Panthers teammate T.J. Washington and Livis Freeman, whom Jenkins hired in 2005 to run his website (krisjenkins77.com) and coordinate his community involvement.

Instead of going to nightclubs, Jenkins spent much of his free time speaking to youth groups. Three nights after his knee injury, he kept an engagement to speak to a group of youth football teams. He stood on crutches and used them as a prop to demonstrate that football doesn't last forever. Jenkins didn't just deliver the message; he started believing it.

"I think Kris learned a lot from the first injury and matured from it," says Panthers defensive end Mike Rucker. "He is around a lot more, and I think being with the fellows helps him."

Strengthening the knee and building flexibility were the first goals, but Jenkins' weight soared. He began running in March, but the pounds were slow to fall off. That's when he called in a nutritionist, who put him on a diet of six light meals a day to speed his metabolism.

Now, Jenkins is starving to get back on the field. At the Panthers' recent minicamp, he was held out of team drills, but he ran sprints, rode a bicycle and worked on making cuts. Jenkins might be cleared for workouts in June, or he might have to wait until training camp starts July 28. Regardless, team officials say they're pleased with how Jenkins has handled this comeback.

Jenkins doesn't want to merely make a comeback. He wants to be the dominant player he was before the injuries--or better. He wants to play a major role in establishing the Panthers' line as the best in the league.

"That was an outstanding defensive line last year," Falcons coach Jim Mora says. "You put Kris back in there healthy, and it's scary."

As he tosses his bowl into a trash can and walls out with a half-empty water bottle, Jenkins makes it clear there's work still to be done to get him and the Panthers where they want to be. "I want my Super Bowl ring," he says. "I'm tired of seeing everybody else win it. I want one, too."

But he's got to stay healthy--and keep his head on straight.

Setting up a roadblock

At the Panthers' recent minicamp, coach John Fox was asked if he had seen a defensive tackle duo as big as Kris Jenkins (listed at 6-4, 335 pounds) and free-agent pickup Maake Kemoeatu (6-5, 340). Fox didn't have to think long. He quickly cited the 2000 Ravens, who had Tony Siragusa (6-3, 340) and Sam Adams (6-3, 330).

The 2000 Ravens were what the Panthers had in mind as they addressed their defense this offseason. The Ravens won the Super Bowl, and the Panthers believe adding Kemoeatu to Jenkins on their D-line could help them do the same. "That's a lot of beef," right end Mike Rucker says. "Other teams are going to look at that and say, 'How in the world are we going to combat that?.'"

In a perfect world, Jenkins would be the player he was before injuries, and he and Kemoeatu would provide an interior roadblock that was missing when Shaun Alexander ran over Carolina in the NFC championship game. "it's going to be real dangerous," middle linebacker Dan Morgan says. "Those guys will be on the field together, and I can just run around."

If Jenkins is healthy, the Panthers also believe Rucker and left end Julius Peppers both can reach double digits in sacks. But the last two seasons have taught the team not to take anything for granted. If Jenkins' injury problems persist, Kemoeatu can fill the role of primary run stuffer and free-agent addition Damione Lewis can bring quickness to the middle.--P.Y.

 

Jenkins hasn't suffered an injury since 2005 FFS.

 

Injury prone is not the way I'd describe him, let's look at him as pre-disastered and hope that remains true.

 

When we traded for him i also remembered him missing a lot of games, so i looked it up and saw, that he didn?t miss a game in 2 years. Guys who say that probably are just too lazy to look it up.

 

I don't believe he is injury prone at all... but what sucks is that he does have problem maintaining his proper weight at times and IF he does get injured everyone and their mothers will think he is an injury prone fatty and the media will never get enough of it.

 

Well he most likely has a weight clause and get find per pound every day he is over weight..I beleive Coach Mangini will be taking KJ's "chedda" if he can't back away from thre buffet table.

 

Or they don't know what the hell they are talking about.

 

Well where all gonna find out how healthy he can stay so lets give it some time. According to all his stats the guy hasnt missed a game in over 2 years. Sometimes it seems like people just pull shit out of there ass.

 

yeah but that depression / laziness / alcoholic / glutton complex looks pretty scary.

 

He has overcame that. People find the strength to get past a major obstacle. He has done that, and is ready to start again with his new team, and position in the 3-4. He is also coming into a locker room that will welcome him. He will be fine. There's nothing to worry about.

 

And something like 500.00 per pound for every pound over...every day your over.