All week long, Vernell Brown III had been listed as “Probable” on the availability reports that were released. Jon Sumrall had been optimistic on Monday the VB3 was going to be good to go today against Georgia.
And yet in a storyline that feels all too familiar, Brown’s status ahead of facing Georgia is up in the air.
Vernell Brown III downgraded ahead of Florida-Georgia matchup
On the official Friday availability report, Brown has been downgraded to “Questionable” and is set to be a game-time decision. Now for those keeping score, Brown was considered “Probable” on Wednesday’s report. Furthermore, Aaron Philo and Tramell Jones were both listed as “Questionable” on Wednesday, but are now both listed as “Probable.”
This is where we are trying our best not to speculate, because the only human who knows exactly what is going on is Brown himself. He suffered a knee injury against Ole Miss, and we have no way of knowing what exactly is going on with his knee.
What we do know is that something isn’t lining up with what Sumrall has been saying relative to the idea that Brown could miss his fourth straight game, and that’s with a bye week mixed in.
Back on September 28, following the win over Ole Miss where Brown exited, Sumrall stated:
“VB3, nothing serious. Relative to what you could get, we got great news after the imaging and everything; the MRI revealed nothing that is long-term. It's, right now, really going to be as much of a pain tolerance and confidence with him being ready to go. But, really, honestly, great news on what we got back. A little bit of a strain, but the lowest-grade strain you could get. So positive news there.”
On October 5, following Brown missing the Missouri game, Sumrall stated:
“At this point with him, it's up to just his level of confidence in being able to do it, but he's trending positively. What does that mean for Saturday? I don't know yet. But he has the ability to run, but he's just got to see how confident he is in cutting it loose.”
His tone started to change a bit after Brown missed the South Carolina game, he stated:
“And I’ll say this: VB’s 85% might be better than a lot of people’s 100%. It wasn’t where he could go out and play the game the right way with confidence, protect himself and go cut it loose. So, anybody that’s created any narrative on that, they’re just trying to take a shot at somebody. They don’t really understand the reality of the situation, and so he’s trying like hell of a play. I can promise you that.”
But then after the bye week, and Brown missed the game against Texas, Sumrall stated this Monday:
“And then VB looks really good. Practiced last week. Practiced today. Today's an hour-ish long run-through for us. But he looks normal to me. I didn't ask him today. I'll put it like this. Every day the last couple weeks when he's been running, I'm like, hey, how are you feeling today? Because there's been some times I've wondered that didn't quite look right today. He looked good enough. I didn't go up to him at all today and ask, hey, how are you feeling? I just let him practice, and he looked like he was feeling pretty good.”
The curious case of Vernell Brown III has fans perplexed
It’s not unfair for fans to have a sense of frustration when Sumrall himself has been the one hinting for five weeks that Brown is on the cusp of returning. There are plenty of online theories as to what is or isn’t happening.
For what it is worth, Zach Abolverdi of Gators Online notes that if Brown had swelling, it could be enough of a setback to keep him out.
But Sumrall hasn't been framing Brown's return through the lens of "Hey, everything seems fine it's just a matter of whether or not there is swelling," he has been saying over and over it is a "confidence" thing.
So all we also know is that there is a disconnect between what Gator fans were told five weeks ago and what has played out since, and that we hypothesized Friday morning that Florida might finally be getting its big three trio of wide receivers on the field at once, only for it to be the case that it isn’t.
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