Taylen Green injury update: Sam Pittman reveals latest on ailing Arkansas QB

Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green’s status for Saturday’s rivalry showdown with LSU is still to be decided, head coach Sam Pittman shared on the SEC coaches teleconference on Wednesday. The head coach has been optimistic about the quarterback’s recovery, though.

Green sustained a knee injury in Arkansas’ upset win over Tennessee and has been recovering through the bye. And Pittman and Co. will keenly watch Green over the coming days to see if he can go.

“I have been encouraged about how he’s practiced,” Pittman said. “He’s still not full speed yet but we certainly think there’s a possibility that he can get there. We’ll have to wait and see there. Obviously we have two more practices and a walk, but have been encouraged about his progression this week.”

If Green can’t play, Arkansas is likely to start Malachi Singleton, who playedG in his stead against Tennessee.

In the week after Green’s initial injury, Pittman shared a fortunate update: There wasn’t any ligament damaged.

“We don’t think it’s an MCL, now,” Pittman said. “More of a bone bruise. And very, very sore on him. Hopefully he’ll be back by LSU. It’ll kind of be day-to-day right now. But our diagnosis was not any ligament damage.”

Pittman discussed a controversial moment from over the weekend

Oregon drew plenty of eyes on Saturday in its huge upset win over Ohio State, in part because of a unique strategy that took advantage of a loophole in the rules around having 12 men on the field defensively.

The Ducks intentionally fielded 12 on one late defensive play against the Buckeyes, gaining an extra defender — at the cost of a 5-yard penalty — while running precious time off the clock in the process. It was an intentional move, head coach Dan Lanning claimed after the fact, calculated to best maximize the chances of slowing the Buckeyes in time.

Since then, Steve Shaw, the NCAA secretary rules editor, told Yahoo! Sports that the NCAA rules committee is considering issuing an interpretation to the rule that would close the loophole.

Pittman sees that as a necessary step.

“Well I think probably once they see 12 men — and I’m not talking about guys running off the field, that’s a different scenario. Because you can take the play or not, but you’re not actually playing with 12 guys, you’re trying to get off the field,” Pittman said. “But I think if you see 12 on the field I think at some point they’re going to have to stop the game and penalize someone for having 12 out there.”

As for Oregon, Pittman tipped his cap to Lanning.

“The rule is the rule, and Dan used it to his advantage because there was no penalty for that per se,” Pittman said. “There was, but the penalty didn’t matter at that point in the game, so they’ll have to interpret it and look at it.”

Many have wondered if the penalty was truly intentional even after Lanning claimed it was. Pittman lent support to that argument from the Oregon coach.

“I’ve been to, I think now, 12 Division I programs and several of those programs have talked about that because the risk versus the reward, the reward is much greater than the penalty,” Pittman explained. “Certainly we haven’t, we don’t do it here. But I’m not chastising anybody. It’s the rule, they used it to their advantage. Is it good for college football? You know, I don’t know that. I think they’ll interpret it and get it corrected.”