THE HEFTY LEFTY WITH BALLERINA FEET
The Pillsbury Throwboy.
The Abominable Throwman.
BBQ (Big Beautiful Quarterback).
J-Load.
Mobile, Agile, Hostile and Hungry.
“I love them. I absolutely love them…All of these, I love them. I was given them in college and there were websites dedicated to these things.”
— Jared Lorenzen to Jim Rome, Feb. 2014 on his nicknames —
It’s easy to be nice and a bit more difficult to be cruel due to the requisite aforethought. A measure of malice and dolops of creativity are involved in weaving a certain labyrinth of nastiness.
It takes a mean streak, some darkness and a little thinking to imaginatively hurt another’s feelings. Of course this amounts to neither a hill of beans nor a fearless fart in the snow if the one on the receiving end subscribes to the old “Sticks and Stones” adage.
People like Charles Barkley had no problem with his many nicknames — at least on the exterior. He was known as “Sir Charles.” Regal and adulatory yet relatively innocuous. But how about these?
The Bread Truck.
The Love Boat.
The Crisco Kid.
Food World.
Ton of Fun.
The Wide Load of Leeds.
The Goodtime Blimp. And finally,
The Round Mound of Rebound, his all-time favorite.
Barkley had the right personality to deal with this good-natured abuse. And boy could he play. At 6 feet 5 ¾ inches he was the NBA rebounding leader in 1987; he scored nearly 24,000 points; and he registered more than 4,000 assists in a Hall-of-Fame career. That he made the NBA’s All-Interview Team for his last 13 seasons in the league further underscores his willingness to engage and reinforces the notion that names could never hurt him. Rather, he thrived on that kind of thing.
Jared Lorenzen’s story is a little different. He too made it to the top of his profession and unlike Barkley he has a championship ring to boast about as a member of the 2007 New York Football Giants, winners of Super Bowl XLII. (The Giants defeated the previously unbeaten New England Patriots 17–14).
Lorenzen was a once-in-a-generation athlete whose career — and perhaps his life — has been undone, spiraling precipitously downward due to his inability to address a severe eating disorder.
He’d eaten his way into obesity. In 2017 he tipped the scales at about 560 lbs. His doctor told him that he was literally killing himself, at which point Lorenzen decided that living a life in denial would soon mean living no life at all. At least on this planet. He knew that if he wanted to watch his two children grow up, he would have to change.
Lorenzen was a legend as a young athlete. At Fort Thomas (KY) Highlands High School he led his basketball team to multiple appearances in the Kentucky Sweet 16. He played baseball. But it was all about football for him and he played like his hair was on fire.
He was 6’4’’ and weighed about 250 lbs., had a rifle-arm and he could move well for a man-child of his size. As a junior, he passed for a Northern Kentucky-record 2,759 yards and 37 TDs in 13 games. As a senior in 1998 he went wild, completing 62% of his passes good for 3,393 yards and 45 TDs. He also rushed for 904 yards (8.4 yds/carry) and 15 TDs leading Highlands to a 15–0 season and the №19 ranking in the country. Responsible for 60 touchdowns in 15 games or four per game earned him the state’s Mr. Football Award and a full boat to the University of Kentucky.
At UK Lorenzen redshirted as a true freshman then beat out incumbent QB Dusty Bonner and started as a redshirt freshman. This was no small feat.
Sidebar: In 1999, Bonner had started all 12 games and led the SEC in pass efficiency, total offense and passing yards per game. He transferred to Valdosta State and won the Harlon Hill Trophy in 2000 and 2001 awarded to the most valuable player in NCAA Division II. The back-to-back trophies made him one of only three players in the award’s history — 27 years at that time — to win it more than once.
Despite his career being marked by two head coaching changes and the resultant turmoil, Lorenzen set school records in total offense, passing yards and passing touchdowns, exceeding many of the numbers amassed by 1999 NFL №1 overall draft pick Tim Couch.
At the next level it was a struggle. He was not selected in the 2004 NFL Draft and signed with the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent. Lorenzen made the team and was the third-string quarterback in ’04 and ’05, carrying the clipboard and wearing headphones while watching Eli Manning and the likes of Kurt Warner and Tim Hasselbeck.
Following an impressive 2006 training camp and exhibition game heroics against the Baltimore Ravens in which he engineered a game-winning drive, he was officially named the Giants backup quarterback behind Manning. At 285 lbs. he was the heaviest quarterback in NFL annals. But aside from a quarterback sneak or two to make first downs on third-and-one plays and “shifting the pile,” Lorenzen was entrusted to do nothing of significance on the field.
His career NFL statistics were easy to compile: 4–8 passing; 28 passing yards; 0 TDs; 0 INT; LNG — 9 yards; 58.3 QB RTG. Toting the pigskin yielded him 4 yards on 2 carries.
His stint with the Giants ended on June 23, 2008 when he was released. Signing with the Indianapolis Colts about a month later represented only a stay of execution; he was waived during the final cuts for their 53-man roster. Jared Lorenzen’s NFL career was over.
Escaping Tom Coughlin’s tyrannical culture, which for Lorenzen included daily weigh-ins, was a relief but in effect opened the floodgates, tsunami-style. After all, playing and coaching in various indoor leagues — as well as serving as the Ultimate Indoor Football League (UIFL) Commissioner in 2011 — did not require counting calories.
He competed; he ate; he drank; he stopped competing while ramping up the consumption; and he blew up like a helium balloon.
Heeding his doctor’s advice he got serious and founded “The Jared Lorenzen Project,” a video journal which documented day-by-day his personal battle against obesity through fitness activity and nutrition.
Since launching the weight-loss initiative roughly a year ago Lorenzen has lost more than 100 lbs. The project is about taking control of one’s health and inspiring others to follow suit. Filmmaker Anthony Holt, and two high-profile fitness and nutrition experts, Gunnar Peterson and Philip Goglia — Hollywood heavyweights all — have been on-board since the beginning and the future looks bright.
A positive attitude and fire (along with the right foods) in the belly. Progress a day at a time. Success hopefully to follow. Stay tuned.
Editor’s Note: This piece was written in August 2018. Jared Lorenzen died in Lexington, KY on July 3, 2019.
