BYU Football: Is Jaren Hall hurt?

BYU Football may have to turn to backup Baylor Romney this Saturday when the Cougars host South Florida.

Late in the fourth quarter against Arizona State Jaren Hall took a QB draw play up the middle of the field for a big first down. While getting tackled, he appeared to have the knee of an ASU defender slam him in the ribs.

Early reports, including from Hall himself, said that he just got “the wind knocked out”, but after watching the game again, there may be more to this than just that. Re-watching the game, the time between Hall getting hit and Baylor running onto the field for the crucial 3rd and goal situation was six minutes and ten seconds. BYU also had three timeouts unused before running the game clinching play.

For all intents and purposes regardless of whether you believe in a backup or not, doesn’t it make more sense to buy as much time as possible and try to get your starter back out there? If the wind was just knocked out of Hall, first off as someone who has had this happen to myself quite a few times, it doesn’t take six minutes to recover, but aside from that, using a timeout or two would have certainly been more than enough time to recover right?

Unless it’s more than what’s being reported.

Again, this is all speculation as I don’t have an inside source on this particular matter, at least one willing to go public, but what happened on Saturday night isn’t matching up. When you throw that on top of the unverifiable rumors that are swirling around, and you have to wonder whether Hall will be playing this Saturday, or if Romney will get the starting nod.

We probably won’t have official word until kickoff, but regardless the Cougars should have no trouble putting away the Bulls early in the game.