SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Perhaps the cruelest reality of Tarean Folston’s season-ending injury is the junior running back tore his ACL on a fairly routine play.
On his third carry against Texas Saturday night, Folston tried to cut outside on Texas cornerback John Bonney, who didn't target Folston's knees in bringing him down. Nothing looked out of the ordinary on the play, but for whatever reason, Folston suffered an ACL tear on it.
Coach Brian Kelly was left scratching his head as to how his No. 1 running back could’ve gone down — for no fault of his own, of course — on that carry.
“It’s a run that I’ve seen thousands of times,” Kelly said, “which usually results in a high five and (going) back to the huddle.”
[RELATED - Notre Dame RB Tarean Folston out for season with torn ACL]
Folston will undergo surgery sometime in the next 10 days, as Notre Dame team doctors prefer for a player with a torn ACL to get some movement and strength around their quads as to shorten the recovery process (it’s the same plan followed by freshman cornerback Shaun Crawford, who tore his ACL during practice in August). If all goes well, Folston could be back to 100 percent by the time preseason camp opens in 2016.
While Notre Dame quickly moved on from Folston’s injury with redshirt junior C.J. Prosise and freshmen Josh Adams and Dexter Williams, there’s still plenty of disappointment that a guy who worked for eight months toward what was supposed to be a big junior year is out after only three carries. But there wasn’t anything different Folston could’ve done during offseason training or on Saturday to avoid what ultimately was a rather freak injury.
“There didn’t seem to be any apparent cut so you can go back and look at, is the strength and the speed of the athlete such that they put so much stress on those joints because there was nothing, if you look at the film, that would say that was a violent cut,” Kelly said. “So it’s one of those things in the game of football, these kids are so strong and so physical — and I’m not smart enough to get into the anatomy of that level other to say that they’re so fit and it really doesn’t make sense that you would lose the kind of kids that we’re losing because of that.”