The real problem is that we haven't stacked 5 star depth like certain programs have. When one of our starters go down, most likely it has a very real negative impact. Losing James last years might have cost us a couple of games. In fact, the only time I can recall in the last 10 years where we lost a key starter and the back-up was just as (more) effective than the starter was Kyle Trask. Of course we all know now that he should have been the starter all along.
Exactly. Outside of the muschamp year where we had an absurd amount of injuries across the board we have mostly been one deep at multiple positions. We all remember how critical David Reese was to our run defense in 2018. We lost quincy wilson that year as well which reared its head against Georgia later that year. The two most critical players in 2019 were Zuniga and Greenard both of whom we lost intermittently for almost the entire year. We obviously lost Grier with nothing behind him under Mac. Teams have injuries but we were critically thin most years. 2006 may have been as critically thin a defense as we ever had but probably had our best injury luck that I could ever recall. If we lost one corner or one linebacker we would have been in a world of hurt and yet outside of Marcus Thomas behavior issues we had almost none.
I’m a retired Physician Assistant with 28 years of orthopedic surgery experience including arthroscopy. Benton is spot on. The MRI usually tells us the story, but it is a static “picture” and can’t show certain soft tissue instabilities you can see better when you are in there “ rooting around”. Let’s hope there were no surprises and his injury is something minor like a small meniscal tear that can be dealt with.
Yea I understand. I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I just think in general surgeons scope way too many people and then say “oh it was so bad” to justify doing the surgery and then “clean it up” and patients are no better after surgery
Amen....when I was about 40 I had a MRI due to a nasty case of patellar tendinitis and the surgeon pointed at some foggy stuff in the scan and said "That's gonna end your running career.....its the beginning of arthritis and is only going to get worse." He also denoted a small cartilage tear (which I had long suspected from an old football knee injury when I was 20) that he offered to "clean-up," but I declined because it only rarely bothered me and then just for a day or two. After the tendinitis subsided, I resumed running and that was over 20 years ago and I'm going strong with no knee pain.
Not a surgeon but a 28 yr degreed personal trainer who is an injury rehab specialist. I have worked with many scoped knees in my career. I have read plenty of MRI reports and post surgical notes.
The last strength program was criticized for doing too much stretching and resistance and not enough strength… It looks like this program has done a complete 180 when you see the numbers coming out of bench and squat and the weight gains and fat losses… I’m not a sports scientist but from what I’ve seen that can potentially be the trade-off when you start really stressing out strength system you think about teams that had heavy heavyweight programs and you can see a direct injury correlation. The team is tougher, better in the fourth quarter, but squatting 600 pounds is not great on your knees… I’m not blaming the new strength program… Injuries happen, I’m just saying it’s something to think about if we keep seeing this going forward.
Ja'Koby Jackson has three years junior college experience, two of which he led the team in rushing and has been here since the spring of 2023. He also looked good in the this year's spring game. I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a lot of carries if Montrell is not ready.
It seems like the Florida athletic program gets more than there share of critical injuries. From football to volleyball. It’s absurd. I knew we were going to have some go down and I remember thinking please not Montrell
The issue with running backs is the depth with running ability is not the problem but not being experienced of taking a hit and not fumbling is huge !
lol … It was UGA and it was Donnan’s last year, I wasn’t too worried about them, especially watching how dysfunctional that team was under him (although they did have some good athletes). I just mainly had to make sure Quincy stayed healthy so he could could play against UF (and he did get injured against UF and although he finished the game his season was over after that.)
This gives the other backs almost a full month. And we all know they’d have played a lot any. Get well soon MJ.
While this news blows, I don't sense it's catastrophic. (I'd be lying if it didn't catch my attention!) My concern is more blocking for the Mertz. Are the other guys up to speed with that? If I remember correctly, Etienne wasn't the best at blocking, he whiffed on quite a few. I'm no orthopedic surgeon, and I don't even play one on television, but in the past, I heard that scoping and cleaning knees out was barley worth it. They must have seen enough in there worthy of a clean up procedure. Then again, we don't have access to the medical reports and knowledge beyond limited news releases. We have quite the load of great of RB 's available, along with a few weeks for them to get some premier reps in. That's huge. May Johnson's healing be speedy and complete! Go Gators.
This instantly raises the responsibility level, necessity level and first team reps for the young RB's a month out, so they should be ready to go. If Montrell can get back to 100%, then this could be a blessing in disguise.
