One game into the season, Illinois wide receiver Mike Dudek is once again lost for the remainder of the season with a season-ending injury. Illinois head coach Lovie Smith announced Dudek will miss the rest of the 2018 season due to an injury. It is the third time in his college football career Dudek has had a season-ending injury.
Dudek suffered a knee injury in the season-opening win against Kent State on Saturday. The details of the knee injury have not been revealed other than the severity causing him to miss the season as a result.
Sad news: @MDFlash_7 will miss the rest of the season with an injury, @LovieSmith announced at his press conference. pic.twitter.com/c1ye9VArkW
— Illinois Football (@IlliniFootball) September 3, 2018
Dudek tore his ACL in the spring of 2016 that forced him to miss the entire 2016 season. The previous year, Dudek experienced a torn ACL that forced him to miss the 2015 season.
Dudek caught four passes for 65 yards in his brief time on the field in 2018. He appeared in seven games for the Illini in 2017, catching 24 passes for 262 yards and a touchdown. Dudek received freshman All-American honors in 2014 after catching 76 passes for 1,038 yards and six touchdowns, but his once-promising college career appears to have come to an end in a very bitter fashion.