Injuries piling on ’Canes
At Miami, a star running back is hurt, a promising defensive end is out indefinitely and even an assistant coach is hobbling around.
The dog days of training camp clearly have arrived for the Hurricanes.
Graig Cooper became the team’s latest injury concern Tuesday, missing practice and wearing a protective boot over his right foot and lower leg. Cooper has been Miami’s leading rusher in each of the past two seasons, and was one of only three players in major college football to score touchdowns four different ways in 2008 – rushing, receiving, returning and passing.
“Cooper, he’s a little banged up with his ankle,” Miami coach Randy Shannon said. “But he’ll be fine.”
Shannon wasn’t certain when Cooper got hurt, other than suggesting that it took place Monday. Shannon said Cooper tried to walk around for a while after the injury, woke up feeling stiff and sore, and stressed that the boot was merely to ensure the injury didn’t worsen.
Cooper, who rushed for 841 yards last season, wasn’t available for comment after practice.
Shannon typically doesn’t reveal much about timetables for players to return from injuries, but allowed that he expects Cooper to be ready for the season-opener at Florida State on Sept. 7.
“For sure, he’ll be back for the first game,” Shannon said. “It’s nothing really serious. … One of them freak deals.”
Still, there’s plenty of cause for concern, especially when considering how injuries plagued the Hurricanes in 2007 and 2008.
Defensive end Adewale Ojomo, who suffered an undisclosed injury “horsing around” in the locker room on Sunday, had surgery Monday and is out indefinitely – a major change from the original injury report offered a day earlier, suggesting Ojomo could be ready for Week 1.
If there’s an upside to the Ojomo injury, it’s that Miami has depth on the defensive line: Ends Eric Moncur (who missed much of 2008, first with a sports hernia and then a muscle tear near his abdominal wall) and Olivier Vernon returned to practice Tuesday after being hobbled for the past few days.
“This is hump week,” left tackle Jason Fox said. “We’re in the middle of camp right now, and this is when everybody’s bodies are sore. Everybody’s nicked up. A bunch of people are sick. When you put your body through this much, that can be expected. But now it’s on us. It’s our goal right now to push through it with a positive, tough attitude and keep getting better.”
It’s not only the players ailing.
Defensive backs coach Wesley McGriff is wearing a boot on his left leg. True to form, Shannon wouldn’t even specify the source of that injury.
“I guess we bombed the DBs so much that he’s starting to hurt too,” Fox said.
Miami’s injury woes were so bad in 2007 that the Hurricanes could barely find enough people to practice in the second half of the season, say nothing for having a quality rotation on game days. In 2008, the depth issues presented themselves again, especially when a slew of defensive veterans went suffered season-ending injuries.
The Hurricanes say this rash of maladies isn’t like that.
“When key guys go down, that’s when you need to dig deep and find who your leaders are. I think the guys we have now are doing that,” linebacker Sean Spence said. “It’s very hard. To do all the stuff that we go through, you need to really have a passion, a love for this game. So we’ll find out how tough we are mentally.”