It’s been roughly a year since Buccaneers’ center Ryan Jensen went down with a gruesome knee injury. As ESPN’s Jenna Laine reported, Jensen tore his medial collateral ligament, anterior cruciate ligament, and posterior cruciate ligament in his keft knee. Jensen also suffered a cartilage fracture and tibial head fracture. Miraculously Jensen used stem-cell therapy instead of surgery to treat the injuries. Amazing right?
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While recovering from the injuries is obviously a long and painful process, Jensen said one of the worst parts of dealing with these injuries was letting his son know he was injured and wasn’t able to play football or with him for awhile.
“It was hard,” Jensen said emotionally via Fox Sports’ Greg Auman. “When I came home after that day, having to explain that to him: ‘Hey, dad got hurt today. I might not be able to play football this year.’ Ten minutes later, he’s like, ‘Can we go play?’ and I’m like, ‘I’m in a cast. I can’t walk. I can’t do this.’ So it was hard to walk through that, and see him broken-hearted for me. … It was tough. It helped me see things in a different perspective.”
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The Buccaneers’ missed Jensen’s presence last season. Not just his play on the field but his leadership as the head of the offensive line. While Jensen missed the entire regular season, he made it back remarkably earlier to start in the team’s wild-card playoff loss to the Dallas Cowboys. Jensen talks about how playing on that game meant a lot to him. He also acknowledged it probably wasn’t the smartest decision.
“It was a crazy road,” Jensen said. “Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have played, but at the same time, I wanted to go out there, help the team and be out there with my guys. It was an honor to be able to be back out on the field, with Tom’s last game. It was an honor to play with him and suit up one more time with him.”
Jensen is not only a beast on the field, he “gets it”. He understands the importance and honor it is/was to block for Tom Brady. Jensen seems to get his importance as a veteran leader on this team. In fact, he embraces it.
You can watch the Jensen’s press conference via the Tampa Bay Buccaneers YouTube channel hete
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