by Austin Silvey @SilveyESP
CLEMSON, SC -- It was announced on Monday, June 1, that rising junior wide receiver Justyn Ross would be missing the entire 2020 college football season. Dabo Swinney announced this in a media conference call on Zoom.
Ross was born with a congenital fusion but nobody knew it until he got an x-ray after suffering "stinger symptoms" during spring practice. Swinney told us that anytime they have a player with a stinger situation or something involving the neck, they get an x-ray done.
"The frustrating thing for Justyn is that he feels perfectly fine," Swinney stated during the call. "He can run, jump, do backflips, dunk a basketball. He looks like he's always looked."
"And obviously he's never had any issues with this because he was born with it. He's had it his whole life, and nobody even knew about it. Eventually, the further he went in his football career it probably would have shown up but nobody to this point knew that he had that and he's had no issues in his whole career."
He will be having surgery on Friday, June 5, in Pittsburgh.
"There's been many people play football with a with a surgical fusion. That's happened a lot of times. But we don't know of one that's had a surgical and a congenital. It just really created some questions for our medical people because the number one thing is that he's safe to be able to play football. So we've spent a lot of time, doctors have done a wonderful job in trying to get the best information and the best path forward."
"You know involved here, when it comes for him to be able to play the game that he loves, the frustrating thing for Justyn is he feels perfectly fine. But the doctors know that that he is at risk."
"There's no guarantees with anything but we are certainly very hopeful that the surgery will go well and it will take him out of harm's way. As far as, you know, risk of paralysis or anything like that."
The hope is he will be good to go by January and then he will have to make the decision to declare for the NFL or come back for another season at Clemson. For now, we wish the best to Justyn and pray for a full & speedy recovery.
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