As a failed pro basketball coach once said, “Todd Gurley isn’t walking through that door.”
With the status of perhaps college football’s best running back still uncertain, Georgia head coach Mark Richt revealed some encouraging news Sunday in that junior tailback Keith Marshall is on his way back into the lineup, and could possibly return for Saturday’s date with Arkansas in Little Rock, Ark.
“Just watching him run straight ahead last week he looked really good. But I didn’t see him try to change directions or anything like that, no quick cutting motions or anything like that,” Richt told the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph on a conference call Sunday. “So I don’t know if he’s as close as he looked to me, just running straight ahead.”
Richt said that if Marshall is not ready for Saturday’s game, he should play in Georgia’s next game, Nov. 1 versus Florida. “If Keith’s not ready this week I feel like he’d be ready for Florida,” Richt said. “So I feel like we’re getting some guys back.”
Freshman running back Sony Michel, recovering from a broken bone in his shoulder, should also return against Florida.
Marshall has been slow to recover from a variety of maladies, undergoing ACL surgery last season and suffering from a bruised ankle and leg which knocked him out of Georgia’s last three games. Marshall has totaled just 12 rushes for 24 yards this season after rushing for 754 yards and eight touchdowns as a freshman in 2012 and 246 yards and one score a year ago.
In the Dogs’ first game without Gurley, freshman tailback Nick Chubb garnered the start and carried 38 times (fourth-most in Georgia history) for 143 yards and a touchdown in a 34-0 flocking of Missouri. Sophomore Brendan Douglas received 13 carries for 65 yards.
As for Gurley? Yeah, that’s a bit of a touchy subject for the head coach of the 5-1 Bulldogs. “You know what I’d like to do, I’d like to talk about this next game, or we might just end this (teleconference). It’s not gonna be about all this stuff,” Richt said when asked on Sunday. “I do not know anything, so my answer is I don’t know.”