During his weekly press conference, head coach Mario Cristobal announced tight end Cam McCormick will miss the whole season. Adding to that, Cristobal gave updates on other injuries surrounding the team. This includes an update on Juwan Johnson and a couple of other receivers, among some defensive players.
Cam McCormick to Miss the Season
What It Means
This is brutal news for McCormick. After earning All-Conference Honorable Mention honors as a redshirt freshman in 2017, he was injured in the first game last season, which caused him to miss the remainder of the season.
The hope was that McCormick would take his game to the next level as a pass-catcher. Things seemed to be heading that way as he took the starting job heading into 2018 away from Jacob Breeland.
Even if he wasn’t prepared to take it to the next level as a pass-catcher, McCormick’s absence was felt in the run game in the 2018 season.
The main reason he earned honorable mention and took the starting job was his blocking.
Now, Oregon will be attempting to boost the running game without the blocking presence of McCormick.
It’s hard to know what lies ahead for Cam McCormick. He will have now played in just one game in two seasons. There was also talk that he would be back during the non-conference at some point, but the injury was worse than originally stated or thought.
Everyone hopes he can get healthy and eventually get back to playing the game next season, and possibly gaining a sixth-year of eligibility. First things first though, McCormick needs to get healthy.
When dealing with this amount of health issues, medical retirement is, of course, brought to the table. It’s likely far off from any decision like that being made, but that needs to be monitored going forward.
McCormick joins Adrian Jackson and JR Waters as players who are now out for the season.
Other Injury Updates
After not playing last week, Cristobal said defensive lineman Austin Faoliu and outside linebacker Bryson Young are set to play. Thomas Graham Jr., Cyrus Hibibi-Likio and Steven Jones all look like they should play against Stanford as well. Most notable, Graham Jr. left the Montana game after being rolled up on by a receiver diving to the ground.
When it comes to receivers, Cristobal said Juwan Johnson looks ready to help the team. The Penn State grad transfer has yet to play this season, and his injury status has been a bit of a mystery. He was reportedly 50-50 to play last weekend but was eventually held out.
It would also appear that Brenden Schooler and Mycah Pittman are not going to play this week and could very well be back against Cal after the bye week following Stanford.