Panthers veteran DT Kawann Short ready to get back on field after season-ending injury
The past year has featured plenty of new experiences for Kawann Short.
He became a team captain for the first time, suffered his first major injury and then missed most of the 2019 season due to that shoulder issue after playing all but two games during the first six years of his career.
Flash forward to the start of 2020 training camp and for the first time with Carolina, Short, 31, will be playing for a new head coach and alongside a revamped team — he is the only remaining 2019 Panthers team captain on the roster.
After having surgery to repair a partially torn rotator cuff, Short is now healthy and is one of the defense’s key veteran leaders this season amidst plenty of young players.
Getting back towards full health and being in this position, however, wasn’t an easy process. He suffered the injury almost 11 months ago, during a Week 2 Thursday Night Football game vs. the Buccaneers. A little less than three weeks later, he was placed on injured reserve, ending his season.
With offseason programs for NFL teams all taking place virtually this year due to COVID-19, Short was not able to train at the team facility as much as he continued to work his way back. He resorted to getting a Peloton bike and getting creative both inside and outside the house (the heat helped him shed a few pounds, down to 315 now).
On top of the obstacles related to COVID-19, the recovery process itself from the major injury was a difficult road and not just physically.
“Just going through it from October of last year all the way until like February where I kind of felt like I was getting back to normal. I had a lot of things just going through my mind, mentally and physically,” Short said Sunday in a Zoom press conference. “(After) February, I kind of started turning around, started feeling more normal... it was just, I wouldn’t say depression, but it was kind of like (I) really just didn’t have a direction to where to go. You see a lot of guys who get injured and sidelined for so many weeks, but when it happened to yourself for the first time, it’s kind of like a rookie year all over again. You don’t know what to expect.”
Short is still working out the kinks in getting back to a full range of motion, but shared that he feels good overall, calling the shoulder surgery an “awesome success.” But for a time he doubted that he was recovering in the way that he was supposed to.
“I had some scares where I thought like my shoulder wasn’t healing right. I felt like it wasn’t in the right direction,” Short said. “It wasn’t at a certain percentage at a certain time, but I had to trust the doctors and trust our trainers. It was like alright, this is kind of how it’s going to go, you’re going to feel that you have setbacks, you’re going to feel good one day and then the next day you feel like you went back. Just trusting in them and really realizing that they were right the whole time.”
The defensive tackle is the third-oldest Panther, behind J.J. Jansen and Russell Okung, and one of only four players with eight-plus years of NFL experience.
After selecting seven defensive players in this year’s draft and moving on from experienced free agents, this defense is completely being rebuilt. The Panthers finished the 2019 season as one of the worst run defenses in the league, allowing an NFL-high 31 rushing touchdowns and 5.16 yards per carry.
Short’s presence was certainly missed last year. From 2015-18, he led the Panthers in tackles for loss (47), forced fumbles (7) and had the second-most sacks (27.5) behind Mario Addison.
“We love to have KK back. We’re happy to have KK back,” linebacker Shaq Thompson said. “He’s a tremendous help to this defense. As you guys know, KK is a big part of this defense. And to have him just teaching (first-round pick) Derrick Brown, Derrick Brown is a special young guy. I think he’s going to be a tremendous player in the league.”
Alongside plenty of new faces, the longest tenured member of the Panthers defense will continue to be a key part of the new look on the defensive line alongside Brown.
“It is new for everybody in this facility right now, just to get used to each other, getting used to the playbook and trying to get used to how each person’s style of play is. I think it’s going to take us some time to put everything in perspective,” Short said. “We’ve got to come prepared, we got to come ready and willing to win, the most important thing you gotta do is work together, communicate, all those types of things that we keep emphasizing, that’s not going to change. We just got to change the way we approach each other and how each other play.”
Change is the easiest word to associate with the Panthers this offseason because this team is surrounded by so much of it. For someone like Short, the differences have come on a personal level as well as he fights his way back to the football field for the first time in almost a year.
“Now, I’m not in a rush to go out there and kill it,” Short said. “But I’m in a rush to just go out there and just play football.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
