Kijana Carter

[spazz70]

(08-18-2015, 08:57 AM)EatonFan Wrote: I watched his college tape.  His line opened gaping holes that trucks could go through.  He had no vision and went down pretty much on first contact in the NFL.  You can say what you want.  I have my opinion.  I'm embarrassed for you too.

He had a major injury in his 3rd carry of his rookie year...At what point did you see a healthy Carter play in the NFL?  That injury basically ruined his career..especially in 1995 terms, medically speaking....You cannot like the guy or the pick, that is up to you but to say this..."He had no vision and went down pretty much on first contact in the NFL" when you or anyone else ever saw him play healthy in the NFL is just plain dumb

[fredtoast]

(08-18-2015, 08:55 AM)EatonFan Wrote:  Small RB typically have short careers in the NFL.  I didn't like the pick then and I still don't.  

He wazn't small for a RB.  5'10" 220 is actually pretty good size for a RB.  All of these guys are smaller than that.


Emmitt Smith*
5-9
221
Walter Payton*
5-10
200
Barry Sanders*
5-8
203
LaDainian Tomlinson
5-10
221
Marshall Faulk*
5-10
211
Thurman Thomas*
5-10
200
Frank Gore
5-9
215
Warrick Dunn
5-9
180
Thomas Jones
5-10
220
Tiki Barber
5-10
200
Ricky Williams
5-10
226
Terry Allen
5-10
204
Earnest Byner
5-10
215
Priest Holmes
5-9
213
Maurice Jones-Drew
5-8
205
Charlie Garner
5-10
190
DeAngelo Williams
5-8
210
LeSean McCoy
5-10
215

Wilbert Montgomery
5-10
196
Wendell Tyler
5-10
198
Brian Westbrook
5-8
200
Floyd Little*
5-10
196
Ray Rice
5-9
195
Travis Henry
5-9
215
Rudi Johnson
5-10
220
Greg Pruitt
5-10
190
Joe Morris
5-7
195
Mike Garrett
1966
5-9
191
Willie Parker
5-10
209
Julius Jones
5-10
210
Greg Bell
5-10
210
Joe Washington
5-10
179

[jowczarski]

First, thanks for sharing and reading - I appreciate it!

That's the point of the piece - that no one ever saw him healthy. It's not like now. Let's say a top pick goes down with a career-altering injury in the preseason - there is all kind of material to show how good he was in camp (tweets, vines, camp look-ins, etc.) Back then, there was nothing to show the fans what he was doing in camp.

It's funny - I see the knocks on here that Carter would try to avoid contact at times. This had no place in the story, but every personnel man across the LEAGUE I talked to (and Bengals coaches) loved that about him. They felt he was a smart runner who knew when to preserve his body. They felt it was one of the reasons he would have a long NFL career. It's all about perception for something like that, sure. Adrian Peterson and Walter Payton lowered head to get an extra yard, Barry Sanders didn't. Can't argue the results in either case.

As for his stats, that's kind of the point of this too - of course the stats are bad. It's not about that. I would say Akili Smith is a bust of a pick -- a healthy dude who just couldn't play at all. Carter MAYBE could've played - but injuries took it away from him.

[Ravage]

I think one of the biggest problems with putting Ki-Jana in perspective is that when his ACL exploded, it was considered to still be a career-altering injury. Players could come back, but rarely if ever were they the same as they were. Even now it takes a while for some to get it back, see: Atkins, Geno. But in 1995? Only the most optimistic among us thought he'd come back the same. I was 14 and I knew what I saw at Penn St. wasn't ever going to show up in stripes after that day.

[jakefromstatefarm]

One of the things that stood out to me in the article were the references to teams that had taken Carter off of their board because of injury concerns.

[Shake n Blake]

(08-18-2015, 02:24 PM)jowczarski Wrote: First, thanks for sharing and reading - I appreciate it!

That's the point of the piece - that no one ever saw him healthy. It's not like now. Let's say a top pick goes down with a career-altering injury in the preseason - there is all kind of material to show how good he was in camp (tweets, vines, camp look-ins, etc.) Back then, there was nothing to show the fans what he was doing in camp.

It's funny - I see the knocks on here that Carter would try to avoid contact at times. This had no place in the story, but every personnel man across the LEAGUE I talked to (and Bengals coaches) loved that about him. They felt he was a smart runner who knew when to preserve his body. They felt it was one of the reasons he would have a long NFL career. It's all about perception for something like that, sure. Adrian Peterson and Walter Payton lowered head to get an extra yard, Barry Sanders didn't. Can't argue the results in either case.

As for his stats, that's kind of the point of this too - of course the stats are bad. It's not about that. I would say Akili Smith is a bust of a pick -- a healthy dude who just couldn't play at all. Carter MAYBE could've played - but injuries took it away from him.

Like Greg Cook and David Pollack, we'll never know how great he could have been. 

(08-18-2015, 08:24 PM)jakefromstatefarm Wrote: One of the things that stood out to me in the article were the references to teams that had taken Carter off of their board because of injury concerns.

I doubt any teams took him off their board entirely. Perhaps some teams didn't plan to spend a 1st rounder on him, but I'm sure if he were available later, any team would've taken him at some point. 

It was just assumed that he'd go in the top 3-5 picks. 

[jakefromstatefarm]

(08-18-2015, 08:40 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: Like Greg Cook and David Pollack, we'll never know how great he could have been. 


I doubt any teams took him off their board entirely. Perhaps some teams didn't plan to spend a 1st rounder on him, but I'm sure if he were available later, any team would've taken him at some point. 

It was just assumed that he'd go in the top 3-5 picks. 

1987: He missed his freshman year due to Osgood-Schlatter disease (inflammation associated with growth spurts).


1990: Knee and hand injuries limited him to just five games as a senior. But, he was a USA Today and Parade All-American after rushing for 985 yards and 11 touchdowns.

1991: He had arthroscopic surgery on a knee, causing him to redshirt.

1993: He suffered a calf strain against Illinois. Carter missed the last two regular season games before returning to rush 19 times for 93 yards and two touchdowns in the Florida Citrus Bowl.

1994: The calf strain was reported as a "knee injury" in by the start of the 1994 season, and that swelling in that knee forced him to miss spring practices. He also suffered a dislocated thumb, but that only caused him to miss two quarters.

Washington was picking fourth in 1995, one spot ahead of the Cincinnati Bengals, and its former general manager Charley Casserly recalls that he took Carter off the board due to their medical concerns.

"That was really our biggest thing on him," said Casserly, now an analyst on the NFL Network. "So at that point of the draft, we weren't going to consider him.

"He was a top 10 player but we had concerns on the medical and durability, but medical is an arbitrary decision. We took Curtis Martin off the board and obviously we weren't right on that one. It's a guessing game when you're doing medical. That's essential. If you only have half the story it's not fair to the Bengals."

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/nfl/bengals/bengals-blog/2015/08/07/bengals-look-inside-kijana-carter-trade-red-flags/30854581/

[*bfine32*]

Ah the 1995 Draft. I remember it like it was yesterday. I hated the KJ pick and wanted the Bengals to stay put and go DT with the #5 pick. I loved the Sapp kid out of Miami.

3rd round is where I wanted to target RB. Instead of taking Tuten, I thought we should have taken the RB from the other Pennsylvania School, Curtis Martin.

[Harmening]

(08-18-2015, 09:17 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Ah the 1995 Draft. I remember it like it was yesterday. I hated the KJ pick and wanted the Bengals to stay put and go DT with the #5 pick. I loved the Sapp kid out of Miami.

3rd round is where I wanted to target RB. Instead of taking Tuten, I thought we should have taken the RB from the other Pennsylvania School, Curtis Martin.

I was hoping for the Sapp pick as well.   Seemed like back then, the pot test failures were a bigger deal.
Wish we would have stuck where we were and took the crazy bastard.

[Shake n Blake]

(08-18-2015, 09:16 PM)jakefromstatefarm Wrote: 1987: He missed his freshman year due to Osgood-Schlatter disease (inflammation associated with growth spurts).

1990: Knee and hand injuries limited him to just five games as a senior. But, he was a USA Today and Parade All-American after rushing for 985 yards and 11 touchdowns.

1991: He had arthroscopic surgery on a knee, causing him to redshirt.

1993: He suffered a calf strain against Illinois. Carter missed the last two regular season games before returning to rush 19 times for 93 yards and two touchdowns in the Florida Citrus Bowl.

1994: The calf strain was reported as a "knee injury" in by the start of the 1994 season, and that swelling in that knee forced him to miss spring practices. He also suffered a dislocated thumb, but that only caused him to miss two quarters.

Washington was picking fourth in 1995, one spot ahead of the Cincinnati Bengals, and its former general manager Charley Casserly recalls that he took Carter off the board due to their medical concerns.

"That was really our biggest thing on him," said Casserly, now an analyst on the NFL Network. "So at that point of the draft, we weren't going to consider him.

"He was a top 10 player but we had concerns on the medical and durability, but medical is an arbitrary decision. We took Curtis Martin off the board and obviously we weren't right on that one. It's a guessing game when you're doing medical. That's essential. If you only have half the story it's not fair to the Bengals."

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/nfl/bengals/bengals-blog/2015/08/07/bengals-look-inside-kijana-carter-trade-red-flags/30854581/

I read the article, and this quote actually confirms what I was suggesting. Casserly said "So at that point of the draft, we weren't going to consider him."

So like I said, I doubt any teams took him off their board entirely. Casserly may have considered him in the 2nd round, but it was assumed that Ki-Jana would be gone in the first few picks. So "taking him off the board" probably just meant that they wouldn't risk a 1st round pick, and they knew he wouldn't be available after that.

[Shake n Blake]

(08-18-2015, 09:17 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Ah the 1995 Draft. I remember it like it was yesterday. I hated the KJ pick and wanted the Bengals to stay put and go DT with the #5 pick. I loved the Sapp kid out of Miami.

3rd round is where I wanted to target RB. Instead of taking Tuten, I thought we should have taken the RB from the other Pennsylvania School, Curtis Martin.

So did most rational people. I loved the Ki-Jana pick, but I would've been happy if we'd stayed put and taken Sapp as well.

Sapp's fall was the story of that draft. The coach that took him was pretty smart. 

[Hammerstripes]

Loved Carter as a player, but hated the fact that we moved up to take him. There was way too much talent at the top of that draft.

We were drafting #5, you knew that Carolina and Houston were taking QBs. That left:

Tony Boselli
Warren Sapp
Ki-Jana Carter

We could have stayed put and probably got him or at least another one of the elite guys.

[BURROWorBUST]

I was doing a post-doc at Penn State during KJ's senior year, when he and Kerry Collins should have won a national title. I can't blame the Bengals for drafting him, and I was stoked when we did. He was one of the best backs I ever watched play at the college level. I think his injury sort of pushed this franchise downhill, sort of like the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth.

We'll never know how good KJ could have been, or how good we could have been with him and Blake in our backfield. That's the tragic part for us. Think of what that injury meant to him.

[jakefromstatefarm]

(08-20-2015, 03:20 PM)Shady Wrote: I was doing a post-doc at Penn State during KJ's senior year, when he and Kerry Collins should have won a national title. I can't blame the Bengals for drafting him, and I was stoked when we did. He was one of the best backs I ever watched play at the college level. I think his injury sort of pushed this franchise downhill, sort of like the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth.

We'll never know how could KJ could have been, or how good we could have been with him and Blake in our backfield. That's the tragic part for us. Think of what that injury meant to him.

I remember watching him in college and thought the same thing.  He was amazing in college, and I was stoked when we traded up to draft him. 

I don't consider him a bust, I consider him a tragedy.  He should have had a great NFL career, but the injury obviously took a toll on him.  With the advancement of orthopedics today who knows if his career would have turned out differently, but I'd like to think it would have. 

Sad story.