At this point in the spring, with Colorado having completed 12 of 15 total practices, junior tight end Brady Russell has participated with the team in a conservative manner as he continues to recover from a lower leg injury suffered last fall at Stanford that wound up requiring surgery.
By all indications, Russell is close to, if not at 100% health, and on a regular daily basis he partakes in most of Colorado's drills during a given practice.
That said, to this point, he has not played in any of CU's scrimmages, something done as an intentional measure by Karl Dorrell.
In his place, senior Matt Lynch has eaten up a lot of first-team reps during the scrimmages.
“Brady is practicing," Dorrell said. "He did everything but scrimmage (Friday). We’re at the point in the spring where we know what Brady is. We want to kind of continue to bring his rehab along by inserting him and getting him some practice time."
"He's been doing all of our individual and 7-of-7s and the team period that aren’t full speed, that are sort of called a ‘thud’ tempo — he’s been able to do all that stuff...(but) fFor the scrimmage(s), we held him out."
Russell looked to be off to a hot start in the shortened 2020 season, as he had five catches, a team-high 77 yards as well as a touchdown in CU's season-opening win vs. UCLA on Nov. 7.
But the following week on the road at Stanford, he went down, and early exit from the offensive picture definitely rocked the boat from a schematic point of view, proving to be far from the last injury to take its toll on the tight ends room.
The injury put to a stop what Russell was hoping would be a nice follow-up to his impressive sophomore campaign of 2019, in which he caught 23 catches for 221 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
In terms of receptions, Russell's 2019 season saw him record more than all CU tight ends combined from 2016-2018.
This spring, the Buffs can afford to take it slow with Russell, given the depth CU has at the position.
And after all, Dorrell has stated before that he primarily wants to use Colorado's 15 spring practices as a way to get the team's younger players as many reps as possible.
“This whole spring process, to me, the number one goal is getting our young players reps to get caught up to what we’re doing and also watching how their development goes — being able to teach fundamentals and help bring those guys along," he said.
Thus, Russell, the former walk-on, has taken a more methodical approach to returning to full contact during practice, closely overseen by coaches.
Things seem to be gravitating towards Russell not participating in this upcoming Friday's scrimmage, Colorado's final one of the spring but at the rate he seems to be going at, it seems fair to speculate he'll be back to full contact by the time of August camp.
"We just don’t want to create a setback for him," Dorrell said. "In a scrimmage scenario, we already know what he can do. It’s just bringing him along in the rehabilitation process, getting him confident that he’s running around effectively and getting his timing back, things like that. That’s all he really needs. He knows all the other stuff."
"We’re being very cautious with guys like him. We don’t need to be exposed too much just because he is coming off of a surgery and an injury.”
