Gators coach Will Muschamp made a surprise visit to UF's media availability for players on Wednesday.
Muschamp wasn't scheduled to speak to the media again until Friday but after conflicting reports surfaced across the Internet on Tuesday about sophomore quarterback Jeff Driskel's left (non-throwing) shoulder, Steve McClain, UF's associate athletic director of communications for football, informed Muschamp of the reports and the confusion they created.
With the popularity of Driskel's shoulder at an all-time high, Muschamp chimed in.
Here is what he had to say in his opening statement, followed by his responses to some questions from reporters:
"This is a situation that Sunday night Jeff got a pop on his shoulder. It was no big deal, thought it was a bruise. We all get bruised when you are in camp and you play football. Iced it Sunday night, it was no big deal. Came in Monday morning, iced it. We had walk-throughs Monday, we had meetings Monday. He came to AP [Anthony Pass, UF's associate director of sports health] after lunch and said, 'You know, my shoulder is still kind of sore. We may need to take a look at it.
"AP came to me before we went to the field Monday afternoon for practice and said, 'We may want to take a look at this.' And the doctors looked at this and he's got a contusion of the scapula. He's going to practice today. He's out of contact for a week. Period. End of sentence. I don't know what else to say. I don't know how some of these things get caught like wildfire. That's it. Jeff even looked at me and said, 'Coach, I had to go back and look at the film to see when I might have hurt it.' He doesn't even know.
"So he iced it Sunday night and he iced it Monday and he went to AP before practice and said, 'I may need to have a look at this.' We expect for him to be totally fine. The competition is ongoing. It hadn't affected anything we're trying to do or how we are trying to prepare our football team. He will practice today non-contact, which 'non-contact' means you don't have contact."
Q: Will he be able to have contact a week from today?
A: They are going to re-evaluate him a week from Monday and Monday of game week.
Q: His red jersey is back on?
A: Yep, red jersey is back on.
Q: Is [QB Jacoby] Brissett's back on?
A: Yeah, we wanted to give them a couple of days [with them off]. We did Sunday, Monday, [and] then we put the red jersey back on again [Tuesday night] for all the quarterbacks. That was something that we needed to do. It was very productive for them and our football team.
Q: Is the injury a result of red jersey off?
A: Yeah, I would imagine he had to have gotten jarred at some point and we did some third downs and we did some other things of where did a nice job of rushing the passer. There was not like it was some big-time blow that occurred, or he went down and 14 guys fell on top of him. It was nothing like that. He didn't go to the ground.
Q: What does a 'contusion to the scapula' amount to?
A: They had to explain it to me and spell it out. It's a bruise to the bone. It's an inflammation of the bone from what I am told.
Q: If you were playing tomorrow and he had to play, he could play?
A: Well, right now he has not been cleared for contact because there could be further damage to the shoulder. But he has been cleared for all practice. He will not miss one rep that he will normally take. He's cleared for everything.
Q: Why address this today with the media?
A: I really didn't think it was a big deal at all. I have been in meetings all day. I had no idea. I don't monitor what the word is out there. And Steve [McClain] came to me and just said you may want to make a statement about it. There's a lot of false information out there. Well, if you want me to say something I will. I said, 'OK, I'll come down there and talk about it and make sure everybody is on the same page about what exactly happened.'
Q: Do you regret taking the red jerseys off the quarterbacks?
A: No. That's football. Everybody is sore right now. It's camp and that's part of the deal. Not at all.
