Florida’s already young secondary could grow even younger for Saturday night’s game at Kentucky.
Senior safety Duke Dawson sustained a head injury in the second half of the win over Tennessee and is highly doubtful for Saturday’s game, UF coach Jim McElwain said Monday.
“We’ll see where that is as we go throughout the week, but he won’t go today,” McElwain said.
Dawson wrote on his Twitteer account that he should be fine.
“Everything is fine, I will be playing this upcoming Saturday against UK.”
Starting outside linebacker Kylan Johnson also could miss his second consecutive game. He’s been dealing with a hamstring injury for the past several weeks.
“Kylan Johnson is doubtful again,” McElwain said. “He’s only about 75 percent on his (hamstring) as of this morning. He’ll probably be down again.”
True freshman wide receiver James Robinson, who has been held out of practice the past two weeks with a possible heart condition, is going to see a specialist later this week.
“We are flying James Robinson to a specialist and we should know more at the end of this week where that is,” McElwain said.
With Dawson possibly out of Saturday’s game, the Gators will be relying heavily on true freshmen. Three were in the game at the same time at one point in the fourth quarter in the Tennessee game — cornerbacks Marco Wilson and C.J. Henderson and safety Shawn Davis.
“With Duke being down, it’s really going to put the onus on those young guys,” McElwain said. “As you saw, a lot of them played last week. They need to really pick up their communication and not just rely on him (Dawson). So this is going to be a big week of that and then film study and putting a plan together on both sides of the ball and just go play fast. That’s what we have to do.”
