Growing up in the small town of Kimberly, Wisconsin; it took AJ Klein a little bit of getting accustomed to his new residence in Charlotte, North Carolina. Going into his 3rd season with the Carolina Panthers, the former Iowa State linebacker is ready to show the league why he starts for one of the toughest defenses in the National Football League.
During his Junior year of high school, AJ was named the defensive player of the year in his conference and earned first team all-state honors as a senior, but that still did not raise awareness like it should have with colleges.
“My recruiting process was self-initiated. After I got the recognition from these awards, I knew I wanted to keep playing football. I ended up putting together a highlight tape with one of my good friends. We got all of the tapes from my games and we sat down and went through each clip of all my highlights, and put together a recruiting video. After that, I burned about 50 CD’s and wrote a cover letter and sent them out to every Big 12, Big 10, and SEC school I wanted to play for to try to get someone’s attention.”
After sending out his recruiting videos, AJ finally got the recognition he deserved from one of the best programs in college football.
“The first school that called me back was the University of Oklahoma. And when my dad told me that they had called, I thought he was joking around. They told me they wanted to offer me, and were going to fly up to my hometown to come meet me. As fate would have it, the following week they had four linebackers commit in one week, so they filled up their entire class of linebackers. Everything happens for a reason, and to have a school like Oklahoma show that level of interest in me was amazing.”
One of the next schools to contact AJ was Iowa State.
“A graduate assistant at the time, Coach Tom Howe, was the first coach at Iowa State to watch my recruiting video. He told me he watched the first three plays then ran into then, head ISU football coach, Gene Chizik’s office to show him.
No more than two weeks later, AJ had received his first scholarship offer from the Iowa State Cyclones. After that, the recruiting process started to slow down, and AJ didn't have many other schools showing interest. Before visiting Iowa State, he visited one other school, Michigan State.
“I was expecting to get an offer from Michigan State, so I took a visit there with my family, and never ended up getting an offer. I visited Iowa State during their Spring Game, and once I left, I knew it was the place for me.”
What made AJ fall in love with Iowa State was that it reminded him of his own hometown in a way.
“Everybody was so nice and so genuine, and I also liked how Ames was smaller and a true college town. Everything about Ames as a town and the people and the history, it’s one of the most special combinations that you don’t find many other places across the country.”
During his time at Iowa State, AJ finished his career with 361 tackles; which ranks 4th among the Iowa State career tackles list. He was also named the Co-Defensive Player of the Year in the Big 12 Conference.
“My experience at Iowa State was second to none. It was the best four years of my life, and we had some of the most memorable wins in school history. I made a lot of great friends and connections with people I still stay in touch with today. I am proud of what we accomplished as a group, and what we did for the program to help turn it around from where it was.”
When AJ first came to Iowa State, he never would have imagined earning such honors as he did.
“I never thought about that kind of stuff. I was more focused on self-improvement from year to year, and challenging myself to be the best player I could be. Having the guys around me like Jake Knott and Jeremiah George, who also wanted to compete, helped me a lot. Those awards were never on my mind. What was on my mind was helping my team win, and performing the best I could.
Of all of the things that AJ accomplished during his time at Iowa State, he says the thing he will be most proud of will come in the future once he graduates. AJ returned to Iowa State in the off season after his rookie year to take a full class load. He is two classes shy of receiving his degree in Kinesiology, Pre-Physical Therapy, which he plans on finishing either this Summer, or next Spring.
“After my senior season, I stopped taking classes my last semester in order to go train with XO Sports down in Pensacola, Florida. I spent 3 months down there doing pre-Combine training, before the NFL Combine. I wanted to do everything in my power to prepare to be the best I could at the Combine, to increase my draft Stock.”
AJ’s experience down in Pensacola was like nothing he had encountered before.
“I don’t think I’ve ever trained like that in my life before, and I haven't since. We worked out twice, sometimes three times a day, and our meals were all prepped for. It was a great experience though to get away and compete with other people at your position. The NFL puts so much stress on a player’s 40 yard run time, so we literally started from scratch with our running. I was basically training to become a track athlete. We spent a lot of time on running technique, but we did a lot of work on strength training, like the bench press. We did a lot of workouts of high repetition and high volume.”
The training down in Florida was taken very seriously in preparation for the NFL Combine. It was one of the biggest events for AJ, and had the impact to either make or break his ability of playing in and having an NFL career.
“The NFL Combine was stressful. It’s a nerve-wrecking experience. They wake you up early, they keep you up late, and they do that every single night until the night before you have to train. You’re running on four or five hours of sleep the day of the Combine, and you’re trying to perform at your peak. They do it all for a reason, to see how people react under the stressful conditions, and how people physically perform in those conditions. When the time finally does come to run your 40-yard dash, you try to relax and let your mind go black and just let your training take over. The next think you know, is that it’s gone in a flash and you’re in training camp with an NFL team shortly after.”
AJ performed well at the Combine; running a 4.66 40-yard dash, but after spraining his right knee during field drills, he was unable to perform his vertical jump and a few other drills that hurt his draft stock.
“I was told, I was going to be taken in the 3rd round, as a Top-100 pick before the Combine, but the Combine really solidified that because there were questions about my speed and size. The thing that hurt my draft stock was hurting my knee at the Combine, but everything happens for a reason, and I’m in a great place here with the Panthers.”
AJ was ultimately taken in the 5th Round as the 15th pick, 148th overall in the National Football League Draft.
“The first day of the draft was more me watching it for the fun of it. I knew I wasn't going to be taken in the first or second round. After I didn’t hear my name in the 3rd round, I was starting to get anxious. After the fourth round I started to think, ‘what the heck is going on here’ and was getting very emotionally drained. By the time my name was picked, I wasn’t even paying attention to the draft, which I think was the funniest part. Right when I stopped caring about when I would get drafted, I get drafted.”
It didn’t take AJ much time getting used to the level of competition in the NFL. In his first two seasons with the Carolina Panthers, AJ has totaled 43 tackles, 17 assisted tackles, and has had 2 sacks; one of which came against San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick. His Panther team has also made the NFL playoffs his first two seasons.
“I’ve talked to guys on my team who have been in the league for almost 10 years, and have never been to the playoffs, so going to the playoffs doesn’t happen very often. Being able to go my first two years has been awesome. If I could do that 10 more times in my career it wouldn’t be a bad deal at all.”
After talking with AJ, it was easy to tell how big of an impact Iowa State has made on his football career. His favorite moment didn’t come from the big win over in-state rival Iowa, and it didn’t come from the biggest upset in school history over 2nd ranked Oklahoma State. His favorite moment was his last game he got to play at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames.
“Even though we lost the game, my favorite moment was my last game at Jack Trice. Walking on the field and having a standing ovation was an emotional day for me. I was holding back tears because that stadium and the fans meant so much to me. That was my life for four years, and feeling that energy every time we played just makes me so thankful. The town of Ames, the football program, and the school has molded and shaped me into the person I am today. It’s almost hard to describe, because that’s how passionate I am about the school.”
It’s obvious that the time AJ spent in Ames and his days playing for the Cyclones helped shape his way in to the NFL. It will be great fun to see what new favorite lifetime memories are yet to be created for AJ as a Carolina Panther.
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