Leonard Fournette is out again, so is this more serious than we thought?
BATON ROUGE, La. — When Leonard Fournette suffered a sprained ankle at practice during August camp, the reaction was rather ho-hum.
“He’s a different breed,” said his backup at running back, Derrius Guice, who expected the Heisman Trophy candidate to be ready to play when the Tigers opened against Wisconsin.
Indeed, the general sense was this: minor injury, superhuman player. The injury would be shrugged off and Fournette would be Fournette.
And while Guice was right — Fournette did get the start and the bulk of the carries against Wisconsin — the general sentiment has been anything but correct.
After Fournette aggravated the ankle for a second time in the regular season in LSU’s 18-13 loss to Auburn on Sept. 24, he missed the Tigers’ next game against Missouri and was ruled out of the game that was never played at Florida.
And on Wednesday morning, he was again pretty much ruled out of Saturday’s game against Southern Mississippi.
“I don’t think he’s going to play,” interim head coach Ed Orgeron said on the SEC teleconference. “Hasn’t practiced. I would not expect him to be ready this Saturday.”
If he misses the USM game, Fournette will have missed as many games (three) as he has played this season. And it would be four had the Tigers’ game at Florida not been washed away, at least for now, by Hurricane Matthew.
So how bad is this injury?
Evidently, worse than what Orgeron thought.
“I thought he was going to be ready two weeks ago,” Orgeron said. “I was wrong on that.”
Maybe we should have seen this coming. After all, the injury he suffered in preseason was the dreaded high ankle sprain, which, unlike lower ankle sprains, tends to stick around longer. Conventional wisdom is with low ankle sprains, they heal and you return to full health. With high sprains, they stick around and you will play the rest of the season while managing the injury because they take too long to heal to come back at 100 percent during the same season.
Of course, we didn’t initially know this as former head coach Les Miles was reluctant to give out details on injuries to the media. However, ESPN sideline reporter Dr. Jerry Punch revealed it to be a high ankle sprain during the Tigers’ 23-20 win over Mississippi State on Sept. 17.
So now that we know it’s a high ankle sprain and that Fournette does not possess a superhuman ability to shrug off this kind of injury better than other athletes, what does it mean going forward?
First, the rhetoric has changed.
Not only does Orgeron no longer come out proclaiming he expects Fournette to be ready soon, he threw this out for a timeline.
“At some point this season” was the best Orgeron could come up with.
Orgeron also shot down the possibility that Fournette could be held out this week simply as a precaution. While Southern Miss (4-2) is a solid Conference USA team that has already beaten SEC member Kentucky, it’s a game LSU should win with or without Fournette.
Better rest him for USM and have him ready for a tough stretch that starts next week with Ole Miss. Right, coach?
“No, he’s not ready. He’s just not ready,” Orgeron said.
Of course, we’ve been saying all year that running back is one position that, despite the unusual talents of Fournette, was a spot where the Tigers could afford an injury.
That has proven true so far. In both games Fournette has missed, Guice has rushed for over 100 yards, and in the 42-7 trouncing of Missouri, both Guice and Darrel Williams broke the 100-yard mark.
So far, the running game has not missed a beat.
But with Fournette’s return not necessarily just around the corner, the position starts to look thin, because now the Tigers are an injury to Guice away from not being able to deliver the dominance it needs to offset the deficiencies in a passing game ranked 12th in the SEC.
Behind Guice, Williams is solid, especially in short yardage, but not the home run threat that Fournette and Guice are. Fourth-string back Nick Brossette was highly regarded out of high school but is coming off a knee injury and might not be ready to carry a huge load.
The only other scholarship running back is Lanard Fournette, Leonard’s younger brother, who is not considered a talent at the same level as his elder sibling.
Right now, LSU can still shrug off the Fournette injury, even if Fournette can’t. But all it would take is one play and the Tigers will desperately need him back.