Junior quarterback Mike Hartline went through his first full practice Tuesday morning since injuring his knee in the South Carolina game.
No decision has been made on who Saturday’s starter will be, but Hartline appears to be firmly in the discussion with true freshman Morgan Newton, who has started for Hartline the last four games.
“Hartline did some good things and then a couple of times it looked like he had a little rust on him,” head coach Rich Brooks said. “Now the question is how that knee will respond in the next 24 hours. We’ll have to see how that goes. He moved around well and he executed the whole offense.”
Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to talking to Hartline this morning, but he told Ben Jones of the Kentucky Kernel that his knee felt fine when making throws. The only time it bothered him is when he rolled out of the pocket.
“You can’t bend it as much as you want to,” Hartline said of wearing a brace. “You have to learn to run with it on. It puts pressure on you. You just have to get a feel for it and it loosens up after a while.”
Quarterbacks coach Randy Sanders said it’s going to take some time before Hartline is “game ready.”
“It was nice to see him out there,” Sanders said. “He looked healthy. He looked like he hadn’t practiced in four weeks. Just because a guy has been around and knows what to do doesn’t mean he’s really game ready. When you miss four weeks of practice, there’s some rust that sets in. It’s not like starting fall camp with him, but there’s still a lot of rust we’ve got to knock off to get him ready to play.”
Joker Phillips, head coach of the offense, thought Hartline started to knock some of that rust off as the practice progressed.
“He’s still a little slow, but I thought as the practice went on he had more command of the ball,” Phillips said. “He knew where the ball was going. Earlier in practice, it kind of got away from him a little bit. But as practice went on, I thought it got better.”
Regardless of who starts, neither Phillips nor Sanders ruled out the possibility of both quarterbacks seeing some time, when and if Hartline is ready.
“If we get stagnant, you’ve got to bring somebody else in,” Phillips said.
