After suffering an ankle sprain against USC on Saturday, fifth-year senior quarterback Kevin Hogan did not practice on Monday and may be a game-time decision for Friday night’s game against Oregon State.
“[Hogan] probably won’t practice until late in the week,” said head coach David Shaw. “I will not have an update for you until Friday and maybe not even until Saturday, but it is an ankle sprain.”
On Stanford’s first drive of the second half, USC linebacker Anthony Sarao sacked Hogan on a third-and-11 play and in the process of dragging Hogan to the ground, Sarao rolled over Hogan’s ankle.
The injury appeared devastating on replay.
“I still can’t watch it,” Shaw said. “It looks worse than it was, it could have been really bad. No broken bones, it’s an ankle sprain, but it’s significant.”
Even though he suffered the injury early in the third quarter, Hogan played for the remainder of the game and wore a brace on his ankle.
“Adrenaline is something special on gameday,” Shaw added. “In his mind, he’s playing. We’re going to do the smart thing for him medically.”
If Hogan is unable to play, then either sophomore Keller Chryst or junior Ryan Burns will start in his place. Shaw would not reveal which quarterback is next in line for the starting job after Hogan, but he did indicate that he may have already made the decision.
“Some combination of Keller Chryst and Ryan Burns will be taking basically the majority of the reps all week,” Shaw said. “If Kevin’s ready to play on gameday, he’s going to play. If he can’t play then some combination of the two of those guys will play.”
Despite his inability to practice, Shaw has full confidence that Hogan will be mentally prepared for Oregon State and even mentioned the possibility that he could play in specific situations.
“We’re not talking about a kid here, we’re talking about a fifth-year senior who’s played a lot of football,” he added. “We filmed a lot of stuff today in our virtual reality that he’ll be able to go through and make sure he gets those visual reps.”
I’m not worried about him mentally or emotionally, it’s just physically. If he can do it he’ll play. There might be some of combination of maybe he can play but he can’t do everything, we’ll see how it goes.”
Stanford kicks off against Oregon State on Friday night at 7:30 p.m.
Contact Michael Peterson at mrpeters ‘at’ stanford.edu.