Mark Stoops says Kentucky's health is in good shape 

Currently, college football programs across the country are putting the last touches on their preparation for the upcoming 2023 season at fall camps. And that is exactly what Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops and his team are up to in early August. 

At these fall camps, the level of competition ratchets up as the start of the football year is just around the corner. And that can cause some unfortunate injuries. The good news for Kentucky, according to Mark Stoops, the team’s overall health is in good shape. 

“Yeah, we’re in pretty good shape. You’ll see a guy or two out there today that just got a little nagging injury yesterday that they’re going to miss out there in practice today,” said Stoops. “(It) won’t take you long to figure it out. But he shouldn’t be out but 2-3 days, hopefully; little soft tissue injury. 

“One thing about our strength and conditioning team; they’re amazing and I wouldn’t change them for anybody, but we push it pretty hard through the summer. I can’t blame this one on them, but we had a couple of soft tissue injuries late in the summer. Our guys work exceptionally hard at speed development and pushing it to that limit. Not training or overtraining them, but pushing their mobility and their speed development.” 

For the Wildcats, during their 2023 fall camps, there are no major injury issues for them to deal with except for that of offensive tackle Nik Hall. Despite the injury to Hall, it appears as if, healthwise, everything is right on track for the Wildcats’ September 2 season opener at home against Ball State. 

Stoops announces Kentucky OT Nik Hall out for 2023 season with injury

As Stoops continued with his Kentucky Football Media Day address, he revealed the major injury new about his young offensive lineman. According to KSR’s Nick Roush, the Wildcats will be without Hall, a redshirt freshman offensive tackle, available this year, as he will take a medical redshirt due to an injury.

Per Roush, here was Stoops’ comment on the matter at media day:

“Nik had an injury and I think he is going to have to take a medical redshirt. There’s another tackle there that had some promise but had an injury and is going to have a hard time coming back.”

More tough luck on the injury front for the Wildcats and at a position where they faced a slew of injuries last year as well. Luckily, Stoops and co. hit the transfer portal pretty hard for more tackles this offseason, but regardless, this injury will still be a big blow to the offensive line depth in Lexington.