Clowney played hurt last year at South Carolina

[ThomasTomasz]

Houston Texans linebacker Jadeveon Clowney, who underwent surgery for a sports hernia two weeks ago that caused him to miss minicamp, played with the injury during his final season at South Carolina, according to a report.

Clowney had said earlier this month that the injury did not predate his time with Houston, but his agent told a different story to NFL.com during Thursday's NFL Rookie Symposium.

[+] EnlargeJadeveon Clowney
Bob Levey/Getty Images
Jadeveon Clowney told NFL.com that he played with a sports hernia last season at South Carolina.
"He thought about not participating in his pro day but went ahead anyway, and what a performance," Clowney's agent, Bus Cook, told the website.

Cook says Clowney thought he was dealing with a groin injury.

When the surgery was announced, the Texans said the injury had happened recently. That statement was seemingly backed up by Clowney, who had said "everything feels great" after being drafted No. 1 overall by Houston in May.

When asked about the injury earlier this month, he insisted it wasn't something he dealt with before arriving in Houston.

"Just when I got here, they wanted to check me out and I told them there was a little pain," Clowney said. "They were like we just don't want it to linger over into the season, so we got it taken care of before anything happened."

Clowney passed all his physicals prior to the draft and the injury wasn't noted until OTAs, when Texans' doctors diagnosed it as a sports hernia.

As for a timetable on a return, Clowney can't say.

"The pain, the injury's getting better every day, day by day," Clowney said earlier this month. "Just looking forward to getting healthy and looking forward to training camp."

Training camp starts the last week of July.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/1...y-houston-texans-played-injury-south-carolina

Clowney was lucky that it didn't impact his draft status because he's a one of a kind athlete. At least he had the surgery now and it looks like he will be ready for the start of the season.

 

[number_55]

I watched Clowney play after all the hype of his 2012 season and was really disappointed. Hopefully he can meet expectations.

 

[ryne candy]

Who is doing the evaluation for Houston? I'm not saying even if they knew this, they wouldn't have drafted him #1 but it is odd they missed it. This combined with Ravens not going after Reed and Houston picking him up, right before his injury was discovered.

 

[ThomasTomasz]

I am not sure who didn't think Reed was damaged goods at that point, but combined with Clowney, it does raise some questions for Houston. Someone in the front office isn't doing proper work.