Texas football: Despite Lengthy Injury, Staff Has 'no plans' to redshirt Jordan Wittington

The freshman running back is expected to join the lineup as soon as he's medically cleared

As Jordan Whittington continues to heal from sports hernia surgery, the number of games left in the Texas season is slowly dwindling to a point where he could find himself within the four-game limit to redshirt in 2019, but Texas head coach Tom Herman shot down any rumors of a plan to do so during his Thursday meeting with the media. 

"When he's ready, he's going to play," Herman said. 

The No. 2 athlete in the 2019 class according to 247 Sports, Whittington was recruited as a wide receiver but moved to running back in spring camp, where Herman said he adapted as fast as any player he's ever coached. 

Whittington came into the season No. 2 on the running back depth chart before re-aggravating a sports hernia injury from high school. The Longhorns moved Roschon Johnson from quarterback to running back to help account for Whittington's absence. Johnson is currently leading all Texas backs in yards from scrimmage and is coming off back-to-back games as the team's leading rusher. The Longhorns plan to play Johnson at running back at least through the end of the season, distributing carries between Johnson, Whittington and Keaontay Ingram down the stretch. 

It's clear the Texas coaching staff believes Whittington is probably going to be NFL bound one day and it could be sooner rather than later, making a redshirt year useless in the long run. 

"To say that,Jordan Whittington is going to be here (at Texas) five years, I think it's a bit of a stretch," Herman said. "We haven't talked about redshirting if that's what you are implying." 

As far as progress goes, it's been "slower than expected" according to Herman, but Whittington appears to be healing normally. 

"The plan is to continue his rehab," Herman said. "He had a follow-up appointment... Back in Philidelphia. There's still a lot of swelling in the area, but the MRI of the procedure looked great. No tears of any kind, but it's just the swelling and the pain right now that we are trying to manage with medication."

Whittington is ruled out for this weekend's game against Kansas, but we should get another update on his condition on Monday.