Jonathan Owens’ life is full of some crazy stories.
“So this a crazy story of how I found out my ACL was torn in high school because I didn’t know for like six months that it was torn,” he begins. “I didn’t know. I did long jump in high school, and I actually won the meet and afterwards my knee kind of swelled up.”
A senior at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis, Owens had competed in the first meet of the track season that spring with graduation just two months away in May.
“I’m like, ‘Mom, I think I need to go get it checked,'” Owens said. “I had already committed to my college at the time and we go and the doctor is like, ‘Yeah you have a completely torn ACL.’ I jump off my left leg so I’m like, ‘How is that even possible?'”
After that, Owens immediately ended his track career and turned his focus exclusively to football. Five years later, Owens tears the ACL in his other knee.
“It was crazy,” Owens said. “Didn’t have one injury all of college and then first three weeks in the NFL, I tear my ACL. At that point, I don’t know how it works. I get all the way here and I tear my ACL and then a guy from the front office, he comes down and tells me they are going to put me on injured reserve.”
Fresh out of Missouri Western State, he had just begun his NFL career with the Arizona Cardinals in OTAs. He rehabbed, worked out and got healthy for training camp, only to be cut ten months later.
For three weeks, Owens didn’t know what he would do if football didn’t work out for him. He’d spend his days calling former teammates and trying to work out. Neither made him feel much better.
“I would be sitting out at the field with my little speaker, water bottle and sitting on a bench because I couldn’t find it to go out there and work out,” Owens said. “Just having guys talking to me and telling me, ‘You’re good, bro. Something’s going to happen. It’s a long season.’ People will tell you that but, in my mind, when you’d only played football since I was 12, I don’t…
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