From FoxSports: GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Florida coach Urban Meyer didn't get much of a chance to celebrate his first victory over rival Tennessee. Meyer spent part of Saturday night in the hospital with injured receiver Andre Caldwell, who broke his right leg against the Volunteers and was scheduled to have season-ending surgery Sunday. The 16-7 win also was subdued because of an injury to defensive end Ray McDonald. The team's top pass rusher, McDonald damaged the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and could be out for the year. Ouch, as they say.
The replay of the Caldwell injury was absolutely sickening. They didn't show the 'break' angle until the 2nd to last replay. But it appeared to break on his lower thigh. I don't know how in the hell he was not screaming in agony when he was being carted off the field.
I've broken my leg, and the pain is very brief..then it goes basically numb. It throbs, but you don't feel a great deal of what we know as pain. Later, as the shock wears off, it is very painful as you might imagine. Losing Caldwell and McDonald is akin to us losing Broussard and Kuale...but Kuale could very well be back for the Florida game.
Except I don't believe UF has nearly the depth that we do to replace them. I understand that we don't have incredible depth at LB, but compared to UF we do.
Losing a starter anytime hurts but losing two starters for the year is really going to hurt UF down the stretch. They may have depth but Caldwell and Baker were the Gators' two top receivers, and McDonald was their top pass rusher. I think the Caldwell injury will really be costly to a team learning a new offense.
That really stings for this Florida team. Was Tennessee playing dirty or was it just a really physical game? I seem to remember a few hits were it looked like Tennessee was out there to hurt people... Who does Florida play next week? Do they get an off week? A gimme game?
Caldwell's injury looked like a football injury. It looked like Tennessee's thugs were really hitting hard, and maybe at times pushing the line. Easy to do against an undersized Florida team, especially considering the historically bad blood between these two anyway.
