In a little more than 24 hours, head coach Steve Sarkisian and No. 18 ranked Texas football will host new head coach Sonny Dykes and the undefeated No. 4 ranked TCU Horned Frogs. Texas will host TCU at home at the friendly confines of Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Nov. 12, looking to make a statement to the rest of the Big 12.
A major question mark heading into this game for the Horned Frogs, though, concerns potentially the team’s top player. Junior star wide receiver Quentin Johnston is dealing with a lower-body injury that has hampered him throughout the last few weeks.
We first saw this lower-body injury bugging Johnston consistently a couple of weeks ago in TCU’s win on the road in Morgantown over the West Virginia Mountaineers.
And then, the injury issue for Johnston seemed to get worse the following week, as he only played a couple of offensive snaps in TCU’s 10-point win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders at home last weekend.
This is the lowest total of offensive snaps that Johnston has played in any game so far this season for the Horned Frogs.
Will TCU have star WR Quentin Johnston available vs. Texas football?
It begs the question, what is Johnston’s status for the Texas-TCU game this weekend?
TCU coach Sonny Dykes said WR Quentin Johnston didn’t practice today. He anticipates him practicing tomorrow.
— Sam Khan Jr. (@skhanjr) November 8, 2022
Johnston missed most of the Texas Tech game with a high ankle sprain.
In a press conference earlier this week, Dykes mentioned that Johnston “didn’t practice today” in reference today TCU’s practice on Nov. 8. But he did say that he anticipated Johnston would practice on Nov. 9, three days ahead of the Texas-TCU game in Austin this weekend.
This sounds similar to Johnston’s workload in practice last week, as he was limited throughout most of the week thanks to the nagging injury.
And given how Johnston was limited in practice leading up to the TCU-Texas Tech game last week, there is some uncertainty surrounding the number of snaps he could play against Texas.
A report from Orangebloods on Nov. 10 (subscriber content) indicates that Johnston wasn’t a full participant in practice throughout the first few days of this week.
From the look of it, Johnston’s status heading into the weekend is still uncertain. But I definitely wouldn’t rule out the possibility of him giving it a full go against Texas. The question will be whether he can make it through some of the early offensive series for the Horned Frogs without getting hampered by this ankle injury too much, as he did last week against Tech.
*Update on Johnston’s status on the morning of Nov. 12. Orangebloods reports that Johnston is expected to play, despite the nagging lower-body injury, for TCU against Texas.
As expected, TCU wide receiver Quentin Johnston is expected to play tonight. Just how available and how much he will play remains a major question, though.
— Geoff Ketchum (@gkketch) November 12, 2022
Meanwhile, the availability of Texas starting cornerback D'Shawn Jamison remains a major question mark this morning.
Johnston is obviously a huge part of TCU’s offense. Any limitations he faces will clearly be extremely impactful to TCU’s entire offensive gameplan.
So far this season, Johnston has more than 40 catches for 650 receiving yards and four touchdown catches. In October alone, he had more than 570 receiving yards and all four of his touchdowns on the campaign.