It turns out Bryce Love’s decision to skip Stanford’s bowl game was really not a choice for the Cardinal’s star running back. He revealed Friday that he missed the Sun Bowl because he suffered a torn ACL in his right knee against Cal.
In an interview with Yahoo Sports, Love said he’s still in the early stages of recovering from his injury, which has dropped his NFL draft stock. While he will attend the NFL Combine next month, he’s still not sure when he will be cleared for football activities after his Dec. 18 surgery with Dr. James Andrews.
“I’m very grateful to Dr. Andrews and his team for making the surgery a seamless process,” Love told Yahoo Sports. “Obviously, there’s no such thing as an ideal injury, but I’m on the path to recovery, and my goal remains the same — getting drafted by an NFL team and being the ultimate professional. I’ll be back better than I’ve ever been.”
According to Yahoo, Love is working out at Andrews’ training facility in Florida and is expected to make a full recovery. However, it remains to be seen how NFL teams will evaluate him come draft time in April.
Love, who was the Heisman Trophy runner-up a year ago, raised some eyebrows when he announced after the regular season that he would be sitting out Stanford’s bowl game to “focus on being completely healthy and prepared for the 2019 NFL draft.”
It was assumed Love was making the same business decision ex-Cardinal star Christian McCaffrey made in 2016 when he decided to skip the Sun Bowl to prepare for the draft. There was no indication he was actually hurt until Yahoo Sports’ report came out Friday.
Love’s injury occurred in the fourth quarter of Stanford’s Big Game win over Cal on Dec. 1. He had gained 74 yards during the game before exiting when he injured his knee on a late carry.
The injury capped a rough senior season for Love, who came into 2018 as a Heisman favorite after running for 2,118 yards while averaging 8.1 yards per carry. Love’s 13 runs of 50 yards or more in 2017 established an FBS record. He wound up rushing for just 739 yards on 166 carries for 4.4 yards per carry, nearly half as many yards per run as last year.
A year after being a touchdown machine for Stanford with 19, Love scored just six times in 2018.
