As some may have expected, Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops announced Trevor Knight will not play against the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
Knight has been missing in action with a neck injury since he was taken out of the Baylor game after being greeted by a few unkind Bears in the backfield when the game was well in hand.
The Sooners managed to bounce back from that embarrassing loss with wins against Texas Tech and Kansas, two of the Big 12’s 2014 bottom feeders. Can Oklahoma, though, pull out another win with Cody Thomas under center?
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Well, it certainly helps with the way Samaje Perine is playing. However, it doesn’t appear Keith Ford is 100-percent the running back he was quite yet, and Alex Ross is still struggling to prove himself consistently in the rotation.
This leaves OU with a few question marks heading in to Saturday.
The main one being: have we seen the last of Trevor Knight?
It appears Stoops is hoping Knight can return by OU’s bowl game, but it just doesn’t seem realistic or necessary.
Call me overly cautious, but there’s no point in risking Knight any further this season. Not to say 2014 is a lost year, because this Oklahoma team did do some really amazing things, but the ultimate goal of a National Title is just not happening.
So unless Cody Thomas gets hurt, I don’t see any reason to throw Knight back out there prematurely. However, it worries me that Knight’s days as an Oklahoma Sooner might be finished.
We saw what happened with Texas’ David Ash, who had to walk away from the game of football this year after suffering one too many concussions. It’s a tough deal, and you feel bad for this 20-year-old players, but health has to be the utmost important to these student-athletes.
And Knight has had a history of getting hurt. His redshirt freshman season was a complete roller-coaster, but No. 9 managed to make it back in time beat the Alabama Crimson Tide and create a lot of hype for the next season.
I think at this point, though, it’s safe to just roll with Cody Thomas. Sure, Thomas has a lot of areas to improve, but so did Knight in 2013.
Thomas honestly fits Heupel’s system a bit better than Knight, but the OU offensive coordinator has been more liberal with his game plan as the season has progressed.
The big fear is who will step in if Cody Thomas gets injured, because Blake Bell has not been 100-percent and you don’t want to burn Justice Hansen’s redshirt at this point.
It’s a weird time in Norman, but Cody Thomas has the opportunity to earn some credibility and gain some valuable reps late in the season like Landry Jones did in 2009.
But we want to know, Sooner fans. Have we seen the last of Trevor Knight in an OU uniform? The main idea of this article was, of course, to point out the health risks with throwing back out there. But will lost time allow Cody Thomas or, say, Baker Mayfield to steal the starting job from TK9?
Join the discussion down below and tell us what you think.