Georgia coach Mark Richt couldn’t recall exactly what happened that resulted in the shattering of Nick Chubb’s left thumb other than it happened in practice late last week and the freshman tailback was not going to allow it to keep him out of the South Carolina game.
“It was a situation where he was going to need the surgery either way,” Richt said Tuesday. “If we could have scheduled the surgery fast enough we might have done it last week, but we just really couldn’t do it. He’s just a tough enough kid where he’s like ‘I want to play,’ so we just protected him the best we could.”
Chubb, a 5-foot-10, 228-freshman from Cedartown, had four carries for 34 yards against the Gamecocks on Saturday. He underwent surgery on Monday to have pins inserted to secure multiple fractures in the bone. Richt did not rule out Chubb altogether for Saturday’s game against Troy but did indicate that Chubb wouldn’t be able to return to practice until Thursday at the earliest.
“I don’t think there was any setback in the ball game but if it took another shot the bones might have displaced a little bit so we wanted to screw them down tight,” Richt said. “… I don’t know how much he will practice this week but if he wakes up Saturday morning and feels good he’ll remember how to run a sweep or a stretch or a zone play so I wouldn’t be shocked to see him play.”
There’s really no need to risk it. The Bulldogs have four other tailbacks who can play Saturday, including Todd Gurley, the SEC’s leading rusher (164.5 yards per game), 5-star freshman Sony Michel, former 5-star prospect Keith Marshall and Brendan Douglas, who played in 12 games at tailback as a freshman last season.
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