Talking to the Tailbacks

Just a quick bit of info from yesterday's practice that I meant to include, but it slipped my mind:

Richard Samuel was among the players available to media early in the day, and I was the first to talk to him. My obvious first question was simple enough: "How's the wrist feeling?"

SAMUEL: "OK."

ME: "So are you back to 100 percent?"

SAMUEL: "(Trainer) Ron (Courson) knows all the details and he told me I was good."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of his own health, right?

Now, you might read into it that Samuel doesn't feel his wrist is quite as strong as the training staff does, or you might read into it that he was quickly surrounded by reporters and a bit overwhelmed by the whole scene. Or maybe you read nothing into it at all, which is probably the most likely scenario.

But then you read this in a notebook from the Red & Black:

Redshirt freshman Carlton Thomas took most of the second team snaps, alternating with Richard Samuel, who was expected to get all the looks with the second team.

Of course, the next sentence in the notes says Samuel "indicated he was 100 percent," so perhaps all of this was cleared up long after I determined I wasn't going to get any useful quotes from Mr. Samuel.

Again, all a bit of speculation for now, but it will be interesting to see if Samuel is getting more action today and the rest of the week.

Oh, and as a side note, I spoke with Caleb King after practice, and here's what he had to say: "My main focus was to get in more shape before the season started, and I believe it showed out here. I'm honestly not tired. I could go out for another practice right now."

And as those of you who follow me on Twitter know, Caleb managed to dodge interviews for the better part of the past two months. When I asked if he'd been avoiding me, he laughed and said, "Nope, I'm just staying focused on getting better."

I'm guessing fans would love to start hearing a lot more of that talk from Caleb.