Jake Butt has a pretty significant knee injury, it seems. But the Michigan tight end never once considered not playing in Friday night's Orange Bowl.
Butt was down on the ground in what appeared to be a heck of a lot of pain during the first half of Michigan's loss to Florida State down in Miami. He left the game and never returned, his college career coming to an end at that moment. After the game, head coach Jim Harbaugh told reporters that Butt sustained an injury to his ACL or MCL.
It's a huge blow for Butt's professional future. He opted to return to Michigan after last season and won the Big Ten Tight End of the Year award for the second straight season and was one of the best tight ends in the country. He was expected to be selected in the NFL Draft, but this injury makes his immediate pro prospects a mystery.
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Of course, in the aftermath of suffering the injury, the conversation turned to the high-profile decisions made by a few other college stars to skip their teams' bowl games in order to avoid injury and prepare for the NFL. Star running backs Leonard Fournette of LSU and Christian McCaffrey of Stanford chose to sit out rather than risk injury. Butt's injury makes those decisions look pretty smart.
Butt, however, took to Twitter after the Orange Bowl and said he never considered making the same move Fournette and McCaffrey did.
https://twitter.com/JBooty_88/status/815075176228548608
It doesn't seem like anyone should be able to fault either decision, the one to play in a final college game or the one to minimize risk of injury while readying for a big NFL payday. For someone like Butt, a big performance with a massive national audience watching could vastly improve his draft standing. For someone like Fournette, already considered one of the top running backs in the draft, perhaps his draft stock could only go down — and an injury could be catastrophic.
Big Ten
It remains to be seen what the extent of Butt's injury is or how it will affect his draft prospects. But it seems Butt wouldn't have missed the Orange Bowl for the world.
Future players might not feel the same way after seeing what happened.