Florida CB Jaydon Hill out for the season with a torn ACL
Florida cornerback Jaydon Hill was in prime position to start opposite of star teammate Kaiir Elam. However, he won’t be able to compete at all this season. Coach Dan Mullen said Thursday that he has suffered a torn ACL in his left knee that will keep him from playing in the 2021 campaign. Hill suffered a similar injury in his right knee during his senior year of high school.
“Jaydon Hill tore his ACL, he’ll be out for the year,” Mullen said. “Very unfortunate when you’ve got to deal with injuries. It’s really a tragedy the amount of work these guys put in, how hard they put in.”
Without Hill, the Gators will have to turn to a host of young players that don’t have a ton of experience like five-star freshman Jason Marshall, redshirt freshman Avery Helm and Ethan Pouncey and new transfer cornerback Jadarrius Perkins.
“There will be a bunch of guys. You’re still in training camp, so there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for guys coming in,” he said. “We have Perkins transferred in, going to have an opportunity. You have Avery Helm who I think is going to be extremely talented. Might just have to accelerate his career to get him on the field. Ethan Pouncey coming off the surgeries, really kind of getting back to the player we thought he could be. So there are going to be some of those young guys who get a little more opportunity than they were expecting at this point.”
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Mullen added that Hill was obviously very disappointed but noted he’s gone through it before.
“So I think he understands how to come through it, what he needs to do and how he can get through it and how he’ll improve,” he said. “And I think within knowing the program, knowing the defense, knowing his maturity is a guy that’s going to be pretty comfortable saying, ‘Hey, I put myself in a position to be a starter, and I had this little setback, but I worked hard. I had to work hard to be a starter.’ And if you’ve done that, know the path of hard work, how to get into that role, when you get knocked off course, you know how to get back there.”
Hopefully, Hill has a speedy recovery, so he can be ready to compete for a starting spot next season.
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