Gordon Monson: Utah seeks a reliable healer to return Cam Rising to good health

Whether you’re a Utah football fan or not, whether you care one iota if the Utes win another game this season or any season, if you’re a human being, well, then …

Damn.

Let’s acknowledge right from jump here the obvious: There are a whole lot of things in this world worse than football injuries, be those injuries minor or major, serious things worth crying over.

No one should shed a tear over the hurt fingers on Cam Rising’s throwing hand.

But what happened at the 1:47 mark of the second quarter of Utah’s 23-12 win over Baylor at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Saturday afternoon just plain sucked. I’m not supposed to use that word in this family newspaper, preferably opting for something a bit less aggressive, but there’s no other word that fits what happened to Rising at that juncture. The man has worked his tail to get back on the field after multiple previous injuries, and NIL money or not, getting put back on the shelf for any amount of time is a shame, a challenge, for him and for his team.

You saw it.

While sprinting across the width of the field to his left, Rising was hit, was cheap-shotted, by Baylor defender Treven Ma’ae, who made what some claim was legal contact with Rising as he moved out of bounds. But then, Ma’ae, who, according to Baylor’s profile, was once offered a scholarship by Utah coming out of high school, piled the Ute quarterback into a stand of Gatorade coolers, a shove that resulted in Rising’s heading for the locker room with a towel over his right hand. The building in the immediate aftermath fell into what could be described as a mix of silence, concern and panic. Nearly everyone in the stands peeked through the digits on their own hands as the fearful notion of a promising season being hampered, if not flushed, fired through their minds.

As it turned out, the damage, according to Kyle Whittingham, is not thought to be “serious,” whatever that means. When it comes to Rising injuries, however, it’s tough to believe anything that anybody says about them. Remember last season, when the quarterback was made to sound week-to-week over what seemed like a thousand weeks? And he never played.

“I can’t give you an answer right now,” Whittingham said, regarding how long the QB will be out. “He may be back this week. We’ll see.”

And he may not.

Either way, Rising was done for the rest of Saturday’s game, eventually coming out of the locker room with a bandage on his throwing hand, a substantial wrap around two very important fingers, the 25-year-old senior taking up a position on the sideline in street clothes, a sight that’s become all too familiar to Utah fans: Rising’s long, dark Captain Jack Sparrow hair hanging out from under a ball cap instead of flowing from a helmet.

Uh-huh, damn. Another Rising injury. Now and again.

Rising managed to grin — or was it a grimace? — as he talked to his ‘mates on the sideline through the second half, trying to laugh the hurt off. What happened on the field, though, after he exited the game was little to find satisfaction in. Utah’s 23-point lead was cut to 20, then to 11, as freshman quarterback Isaac Wilson tried to restart an engine that struggled to turn over.

Whittingham, rather ironically, had spoken about how important Rising was and is to his team when he said straight into a sideline camera and microphone at the break between the first and second quarters, when Utah led, 17-zip, “He’s our leader and when he’s out there, everyone elevates.”

And when he’s not out there?

Everyone descends.

Nobody wanted to think about that until they had to.

Not long thereafter, they had to.

His replacement, Wilson, pretty much looked like a freshman, although Whittingham said he thought the youngster played with more confidence this week than he did in relief in a blowout win last week.

For his part, Wilson, who talks like a freshman, too, as though he’s a computer who’s had talking points loaded into his hard drive, said afterward that he’s “got to trust in my teammates and they have to trust in me.”

He repeatedly added: “I’ve got to be ready. Got to be ready.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Whittingham said that Wilson would be the starter if Rising can’t go.

He also said, “When Cam left the game, it was a downer for us.”

That’s likely the understatement of the season thus far.

Until he was forced out, Rising made everything for the Utes look easy. The offense was moving the ball, the defense was stoning the Baylor attack, and even the special teams had their way, at one point blocking a field goal and returning that block for a touchdown.

After that “downer,” the Utes couldn’t move the ball, couldn’t sustain drives, couldn’t kick field goals, couldn’t score. The defense put up enough resistance to preserve the victory, but no one was fooling themselves into believing the result, as it arrived, was much to celebrate.

It just kind of was.

“We lost our momentum,” said Whittingham.

It was a strange way for the Utes to enter their new conference, the Big 12, without actually entering it. A quirk of scheduling transformed this game against a league foe from an official entrance to a kind of formal announcement, “Look here, all y’all, we’ve arrived.” And the Utes looked like the belle of the debutante ball, presented as a dominant, formidable new force in the Big 12 — until the clock struck the 1:47 mark of the second quarter. Thereafter, Utah took on the appearance of a team that needed to fix stuff.

“A sloppy game on our part,” Whittingham said. “We have a lot of things to address.”

Foremost among those things, finding a reliable healer to return Rising, the one who elevates, to good health.

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