Mizzou football: Weekend was a roller coaster for roster

Mizzou football saw a season’s worth of roster emotions wrapped up in one weekend.

The Mizzou football team had a positive and negative injury report come out Sunday, but that wasn’t all that the team dealt with as the roster was in flux throughout the weekend.

Quarterback Kelly Bryant is going to play against Ole Miss on Saturday. It appeared Saturday night that the senior might be out for the rest of the season.

Bryant went down with a knee injury on a questionable hit from Troy defensive linemen Travis Sailo at the end of the first half. He went into the locker room right after the hit where he was examined.

Missouri Tigers Football

The official diagnosis of a knee sprain didn’t come out for 24 hours, but immediately people speculated it could be a season-ending knee injury. He went down awkwardly and it could have been a torn ACL or something similar.

At the same time, linebacker Cale Garrett exited the game as did most of the starters for the Tigers. Nobody knew it then, but Garrett was playing with a torn pectoral tendon. And playing well enough to earn SEC Defensive Player of the Week for the second game in a row.

On Saturday night, fans were worried that it would be Bryant who might miss the season, not Garrett. The following day, we found out Bryant had a sprained left knee and would be a full participant this week, only to find out Garrett is going to have surgery and is out indefinitely.

Coach Barry Odom spoke about the injury Monday, and he said we will know more about Garrett’s status after Tuesday’s surgery, per ESPN.

"“Any way you look at it, it’s devastating, it’s awful,” Odom said. “But I also know in listening to defensive staff last night and watching the players today, they’re going to go out and try to play even better for Cale. We understand that he was as productive as anybody in the country.“We’re not wanting or needing one guy to step up and expect him to get the same amount of production as Cale, but we’re going to need everybody to fill in.”"

At the same time Mizzou football released the injury report, the Tigers announced that punt returner Richaud Floyd was doubtful for this weekend with a hamstring injury. That wasn’t great news, but he was on crutches during the second half of Saturday night, so it could have been worse.

Floyd was noticed on crutches by CBS, but it was reported to be Bryant during the game. That left a little speculation that Bryant was done for the year, but many knew it was the senior cornerback who was on the sideline, not the senior quarterback.

Then, a day later, we found out Floyd could miss time, but probably not the rest of the year. T.J. Moe had Odom on his radio show on Monday, and Odom spoke about all of that news, including Bryant and Garrett.

The injuries weren’t all. Mizzou announced a pair of roster exits as well.

Before Saturday’s game, the Mizzou football department released a statement that defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat was no longer on the team and left the school. That was shocking, as just an hour before that reporters at Mizzou were checking if the sophomore was on the field for warmups as he was scheduled to make his first appearance of the season.

Jeffcoat missed the first four games with a sprained elbow he suffered on the first day of camp. He was getting healthy, and over the bye week and into the week of preparation for Troy, Jeffcoat was practicing more. He even was listed on the two-deep depth chart for the first time last week.

So people were expecting to see Jeffcoat, if not on the field Saturday, sometime soon. Instead, they won’t see him ever again in a Tigers uniform.

Also Saturday, PowerMizzou’s Gabe DeArmond tweeted that safety Jordan Ulmer is leaving the team. This season could have been a bounce-back year for the once freshman starter, but he decided to leave the school without an official announcement until DeArmond got it confirmed by Odom on Saturday.

That’s not too surprising as Ulmer was entering his fifth game. Because of the transfer rule, Ulmer can save a year of eligibility by leaving before Saturday’s game against Troy, and so he did.

Now to recap: Bryant was thought to be gone for the year, he will start next week; Garrett was thought to be a sure SEC Defensive Player of the Year candidate and maybe an All-American, now his season likely is over, but we still are waiting; Floyd was speculated to be Bryant on crutches, but he wasn’t, and he is doubtful for Ole Miss; Jeffcoat was supposed to make his first appearance of the year, now we know he is no longer at Mizzou; Ulmer was on the team as a reserve safety, but he no longer is on the team at all.

That’s a lot to take in for one weekend, one that saw Mizzou football trounce the Troy Trojans. The game was sort of secondary to all of news and notes.