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Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News just tweeted out a piece of news regarding our offensive line:
Baylor starting OL Troy Baker with apparent ACL injury, Briles said. On crutches afterwards.
— Chuck Carlton (@ChuckCarltonDMN) October 18, 2014
Granted, we won't be able to confirm this information medically until tomorrow or Monday at the earliest, but this news is potentially devastating, given the state of the left side of our offensive line. This marks the second member of the right side of our offensive line to go down. We lost RG Desmine Hilliard to a wrist injury after last week, and now RT Troy Baker went down with the ACL. Both look to be done for the season.
As I am writing this post, more information coming out from David Smoak, apparently confirming the fact that Baker's injury is an ACL.
It's official, #Baylor Sr OT @T_Baker75 has torn ACL, MRI to confirm, but his football career has ended, big fella, we're thinking about you
— David Smoak (@DavidSmoak) October 18, 2014
As Mark talked about earlier this week when the news regarding Hilliard broke, the line could absorb the hit, but the real problem was with depth. Now, that lack of depth is exposed with Baker going down. Horrible news, both for Baylor and for Baker, who struggled to return during his junior season from an ACL injury.
We'll have more analysis on the impact of this injury later.