Lincoln Riley: Oklahoma TE Austin Stogner lost 35 pounds from staph infection and leg injury

Oklahoma tight end Austin Stogner’s knee injury against Kansas back on Nov. 7 turned into something much worse.

Stogner ended up requiring surgery and a significant round of medications to clear up a staph infection on his quad muscle after the injury, and coach Lincoln Riley said Friday that Stogner ended up losing “in the neighborhood of 35 pounds.”

“I might actually be shortchanging it a little bit,” Riley said in his customary postseason interview with OU beat reporters to wrap up the season — this year a 40-minute Zoom call.

“Stogs was a long journey back,” Riley said.

The 6-foot-6, 262-pound sophomore from Plano, TX missed the second half of the KU game after walking to the locker room under his own power, then missed the team’s final two regular-season games as well as the Big 12 Championship Game.

He made it back for the Cotton Bowl on Wednesday, but only played a handful of snaps.

“It really hit his body hard in the procedure and the medications and all that he was on to fight the infection,” Riley said. “They were successful, but they also really took a toll on his body. So as he was kind of able to finally get past some of the medications and able to start eating normally and do some things actively, he got better quickly but it just took a long, long time to get to that point.

“It was, I would say, a good three weeks before we thought about doing anything with him. It was a scary thing to go through and again, just so kind of crazy and unexpected. We knew he took a pretty decent hit in that game but never dreamed that something like that’s going to happen — and obviously got a lot worse before it got better.”

Despite missing 4 1/2 games, Stogner was third on the team this year with 26 catches and 442 yards and scored three touchdowns. He started out the year with 83 yards against Kansas State, 74 against Iowa State and 56 against Texas, including a game-tying touchdown in overtime. Stogner also had 77 yards and a TD against Texas Tech and 75 yards and a score against KU.

Riley expressed admiration for a handful of other players this season who were able to either play through various injuries or overcome them.

“I’d say a lot about Brayden Willis coming back after that knee injury,” Riley said. “He wasn’t, even at the end of the year, wasn’t quite 100 percent, and that was a tough injury to come back from.

“LaRon Stokes, I would put in that category as well. Both guys had — not devastating but significant knee injuries that they had to work through and got themselves back on the field and were contributors for us there at the end but certainly weren’t 100 percent. I think we had several.

“I don’t know that it was any more or any less than any other year, to be completely honest. I think some of our guys took a lot of reps through the year in that your rosters were so different at so many times, both practice and games, we just didn’t have nearly as many people available as we were used to having, and so we had to try to manage that some throughout the year.

“But as far as strictly playing through pain, those two guys come to mind.”