Clemson Football: Could Adam Randall Return in 2022?
For Clemson football the news that true freshman and early enrollee Adam Randall had suffered a torn ACL last Friday appeared devastating.
For a team that suffered through too many injuries to count last season there was hope that this season would be different, that the injury luck would be on Clemson’s side, not diametrically opposed to the Tigers.
Randall had turned heads since arriving on campus in January, for his physique and for his play and appeared destined to become a shot in the arm at a position that the Tigers certainly could use a big, physical presence.
Any time you’re compared physically to Sammy Watkins as a freshman, you know you’re doing something right.
The injury appeared to put all that on hold and the possibility of the worst crept into my mind.
Then, Wednesday afternoon, word came out that maybe it wasn’t as bad as the thoughts racing through my mind,
Dabo Swinney said Adam Randall's ACL tear was the best-case scenario in terms of how he tore it. "He's still going to have a great freshman year. He's going to be fine." Swinney not going to lay out an exact timetable but not impossible he's back for Week 1.
— Jon Blau (@Jon_Blau) April 6, 2022
That’s an interesting quote from Dabo from my perspective. Boiled down, 5 days after an ACL tear Dabo is indicating Randall is not only going to play this year, but have a “great” year.
"“He’s still going to have a great freshman year. He’s going to be fine.”"
There’s no other explanation of the quote, no clarification to what “great” means in this context. It could mean anything from just being able to get on the field at some point to 50 receptions and the All-ACC Freshman team.
Who really knows?
We have precedence though in Amari Rodgers, who returned a few months after his ACL and played well that fall.
There’s a huge difference though, as Casey Cregan and I discussed last night on the Sluggo Podcast. Randall is a true freshman, learning the offense, while Rodgers was a grizzled vet and a master of the offense.
The learning curves are even close.
I’m not selling Randall short. From all appearances he’s a stand up young man, who is driven to succeed and my guess is he’ll likely do just that – succeed.
For me, I just hope for what’s best for Adam Randall and his future, whether that’s playing this year or taking the year to get back to where it was.