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SALT LAKE CITY — The primary storyline as the University of Utah football team opened fall camp on Monday afternoon revealed itself on Jan. 2 at the Rose Bowl.
When Cam Rising was helped off the field that evening with an apparent leg injury, later revealed to be a torn ACL, the focus immediately turned to the 2023 season. How long will Rising be out? Will he be ready for fall camp? Will be able to play in the opener vs. the University of Florida on Aug. 31?
This topic, not to mention those questions, persisted through the winter, into spring practice, where Rising did not participate, and now deep into the summer as the season begins to come into focus. With the Utes now staring at the proverbial clock in terms of trying to get Rising ready, there was good news and bad news on Monday.
The good news is that Rising has reached the point of his rehabilitation where he is cleared for basic football functions like throwing and dropping back, but the bad news for now is that is all the sixth-year senior is cleared for. No real lateral movement, and certainly, as offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig termed it Monday, a limit on team-type plays where "sudden reactions" are involved.
"He'll be practicing, but he'll have limitations," Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. "That will pretty much be the report for at least a couple of weeks, practicing with limitations, and hopefully some of those start to get lifted as we get deep into camp, but today was a good start and we just have to be intelligent about it."
Whittingham indicating Rising will be limited for the early portion of camp lends credence to his semi-surprising update on Rising at Pac-12 media day on July 21 when he said, "Cam is going to come right down to the wire." Whittingham said previously that in order for Rising to start on Aug. 31, he needs to be ready to go roughly 10-14 days before that date.
For the sake of arguing, if Rising is limited for the first two weeks of camp, that brings the calendar to Aug. 14, 17 days before Florida. At that point, Whittingham's soft deadline of 10-14 days would be approaching and decisions would need to start getting made.
"I don't have that crystallized," Ludwig said when asked if he had a target date in mind to have Rising fully healthy and ready to work with the first-team offense. "I would lean on coach Whitt, what his thoughts are, but Cam is obviously a proven commodity, got a ton of quality reps under his belt and is just a premier player at that position. We've got a lot of confidence in his ability, maybe not to pick up exactly where he left off, but he's a really good player."
Just as it commanded much of the attention with Rising shelved during spring practice, the three-way battle to be QB2 between Brandon Rose, Nate Johnson and Bryson Barnes will dominate talk this month. Not only are Whittingham and Ludwig trying to find a backup, they're trying to determine the most viable option to start if Rising cannot.
Rose, a redshirt freshman who ran the scout team for the final 75% of last season, left spring ball penciled in as QB2 on the heels of a 19-of-24, 233-yard performance in the 22 Forever Game.
He remains in that space, but there will be competition, specifically from Johnson, who missed a chunk of time in the spring with a lower-body injury. This, after the former four-star recruit showed flashes of his superior athleticism late last season in a small handful of cameo appearances.
How ready Rose is to start a college football game, let alone make his collegiate debut against a Power Five defense remains to be seen, but Ludwig, for better or worse, is about to find out.
"I would ask you to ask me that after a week because we'd be basing it off the spring game, but again, he had a good spring game," Ludwig said. "That's a big task, a redshirt freshman stepping on the field against Florida.
"He was a young guy, a freshman having a redshirt and life was good, and then boom, you've got a chance to be the No. 1 quarterback all spring. Things were rough early on, but he stuck with it and just kept working and got better and better. There's been a real maturation about the kid, not just in between the lines, but in his whole life."
