Lucas Gebhart

Sports Editor

The 2015 season ended before it even began for Mario Jenkins and Taison Manu, as two of the team’s top three leading tacklers from 2014 both suffered season-ending injuries during the offseason.

Jenkins, a redshirt junior, tore his ACL just four practices into the new campaign.

“I knew right off the gate I did something to my knee,” Jenkins said. “Not being able to play with all those guys and not being able to play the game that I love, it was upsetting.”

Roughly two and a half weeks after the Bengals lost Jenkins for the season, another star defensive player went down, limping to the sideline. This time it was Manu.

It wasn’t apparent that Manu was seriously hurt. The training staff gave him the green light and told him he could practice the following Monday. Monday came and Manu couldn’t walk.

He attempted to practice but 20 minutes in, it was obvious he was unable to. Manu revisited the trainers, still unaware that the injury was serious. An x-ray found a broken bone in his foot, ending his season.   

The team announced the next day that two of its best defensive players were lost for the season.

“It was a bummer for me because I wanted to play with that senior class,” Manu said. “But it worked out for me academically because I still needed another year to finish my major.”

The two still showed up to film sessions and practices, but had to watch the game from the press box.

Not being on the field with their teammates was hard, but watching their team go 2-9 was ever harder.

“It sucked,” Manu said. “There is no other way to put it.” 

As Jenkins and Manu overheard negative comments from the fans, the two could not help but think the outcomes of certain plays may have ended differently if they were playing. 

“We were yelling for them and everything,” Jenkins said. “We felt helpless.”

Manu and Jenkins watched as inexperienced players missed reads causing opposing offenses to thrive in their absence. Jenkins could do nothing but watch as the Bengals gave up over 1,000 rushing yards in two-week span – 517 to UNLV and 499 to Cal Poly.

“It is just play recognition,” Jenkins said. “If you know football, then you know what is going to happen, what may happen and where you are supposed to be, where you’re not supposed to be. It is just simple plays like that. 2-9, it proves it.”

For Manu, the play action passes were hard to watch. 

“I saw it the whole time in the stands,” Manu said. “Then, here it comes, big play by the offense. Probably every game it happened.”

Manu would scream out warnings to his young safety replacement before the play even began but Manu was well out of ear shot.   The hardest part about coming back from injuries is the rehabilitation process.

With injuries that kept both Jenkins and Manu off their feet for multiple months, the two soon fell out of shape.   

“Anything can happen, it is football,” Jenkins said. “It happened. But now that I think about it, I am glad that it did.” 

Jenkins says that he feels like a different person. He is bigger, stronger, faster and knows the game better than ever.

“I know the game a little better, I studied it from different perspectives,” Jenkins explained.

“With our coaches, they played and now they see the game in a different perspective,” Jenkins said. “They aren’t on the field anymore, but they know what is going to happen and they can tell us. That is basically what we were. We were coaches for our teammates.”

Jenkins and Manu learned the ins and outs of the defense.

“You can’t work out,” Manu said. “The only thing you can do to get better is to study the film even more.”

“It was hard,” Jenkins recalled. “We were getting stronger in the weight room but we were gaining weight. We looked thicker, but it came off as soon as we started to run.”

After an agonizing 2-9 season, the two finally got a chance to put the pads back on and redeem themselves. Although rusty, Jenkins and Manu had not lost their ability to play football.

“We have been playing football for a long time,” Jenkins said. “There are a lot of things that good football players have that are un-coachable,” Manu added. “Mario and I both have that.”

It took two to three weeks for Jenkins and Manu to feel as if they were back to their old selves.

“I don’t think my position coach thought that, because I hadn’t gotten a pick yet,” Manu said. “I got a pick the third week and after practice he came up to me and said ‘you look like the old you,’ having him say that was a really big confidence booster for me.” 

Recognizing the nonverbal “good play,” facial expression is what Jenkins needed to earn his confidence back.

“It was like, ‘okay, I remember that face,’” Jenkins said. “That is when your confidence is up.”

According to Manu, two thing have to happen to get back into a football mindset.

“The first is being confident,” Manu said, adding that you can’t be worried about making mistakes. “It always happens. You are going to make mistakes, don’t worry about it, keep playing.”

His second indicator was having fun.

“When you have those two things, you are going to be a good football player.”

“That is one of our goals as a team,” Jenkins said. “Be loud, be vocal and have fun.”