Late last week Brian Kelly announced that wide receiver Kevin Austin was on track to be able to dress against Florida State. He didn’t then give details as to if Austin would be a full-go, simply dress or what the deal would be.
Then earlier this week Kelly shared that it should be around 15-20 snaps that Austin sees against the Seminoles this Saturday night as long as things continued to progress but did clarify that it was in the hands of the medical team, not of the coaches.
Well it turns out things must have progressed well for Austin as Kelly shared on Thursday how he saw Austin’s week of practice and how he anticipates the wide receiver being used in his season debut this week.
“Yeah, he’s gonna play and he’s had a good week,” Kelly said, “No setbacks. He can certainly help us.
Kelly went on to mention that despite being cleared, you still have to be smart in how he returns to action.
“We want to be careful. He’s only going to be about 11 weeks post, not that we’re putting him in a vulnerable position, but we’ve got to be careful.”
Kelly was also sure to share the reminder that just because he’s cleared, doesn’t mean to expect him to at full speed for all 60 minutes on Saturday night.
“He hasn’t played full speed football in a long, long time, so I think we want to err on caution, in terms of his his snaps this week, and then we’ll go from there.”
Notre Dame’s receivers entered fall camp as a perceived strength but through two games they’re yet to produce. Part of that is clearly due to injuries with Austin not yet playing a down and Ben Skowronek not playing since the first half against Duke because of a hamstring injury.
Of wide receivers, Joe Wilkins leads the unit two games in with all of 44 receving yards on the season. Braden Lenzy has 34 receiving yards in just one game while Avery Davis finds himself third among receivers with 26 yards to date. Davis is also responsible for the only touchdown scored by a Notre Dame wide receiver this year.
Clearly it’s a position group that hasn’t performed up to expectation but it’s obvious that injuries haven’t at all helped that yet.
The addition of Austin adds the most complete receiver on the roster to the game plan and should benefit the other parts of the receiving corps and Ian Book as a result.
Although he may only play 15-20 snaps on Saturday, Austin’s impact should start to be felt very quickly.