Steve Sarkisian provides Texas spring injury updates

Mar 6, 2023 - 8:13 PM

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Following the first spring practice for the Texas Longhorns on Monday, head coach Steve Sarkisian met with the media and provided an injury update.

The most significant news provided by Sarkisian was that junior wide receiver Xavier Worthy played through a broken hand through the second half of the 2022 season and spent about two months with a cast on it before practicing full speed on Monday.

“Any time you’re a receiver and you’re playing with a broken hand, that’s a pretty important aspect of your game and that guy never wanted to to sit out, not play,” Sarkisian said. “He came to work, he fought through it. There were days in practice where we purposely didn’t throw him balls just to take some of the pressure off of it. But I think we’re gonna see a version of Xavier Worthy that’s going to be dramatically different.”

Worthy struggled with drops in 2022 as he saw his receiving yardage drop from 981 yards to 760 yards and his touchdowns decrease from 12 to nine.

A handful of players will be out or limited through spring practice — sophomore running back Jonathon Brooks, who had postseason surgery, senior safety Jalen Catalon is limited following his shoulder injury at Arkansas, sophomore nickel back Jaylon Guilbeau is rehabbing his knee injury, freshman linebacker Derion Gullette is also rehabbing the knee injury he suffered in high school, redshirt freshman quarterback Maalik Murphy is still nursing his foot injury from high school, Sarkisian “loves” where senior wide receiver Isaiah Neyor is with his rehab, redshirt freshman Connor Robertson is recovering from postseason surgery, and senior running back Keilan Robinson is dealing with a “little bit of a strain.”

“I think that the ACL guys I’m gonna say they’re out, but we’re gonna try to do some work with them,” Sarkisian said. “But the rest of them hopefully we can get them back — there’s a reason we started spring ball this week and we’ll go three practices, we’ll get spring break, and then we’ll go four [weeks] more so it really stretches out over a six-week period. So I’m hopeful with some of these guys we can get them back out in the second half of spring.”