Cage hits the books
He doesn’t come to practice, doesn’t hit the weights much and hasn’t talked to Kelly about his football future in weeks.
And Kelly wouldn’t have it any other way for senior Daniel Cage.
The part-time starter at nose guard in 2016 is sitting out the season, and could retire from the sport in the coming months, after suffering a knee injury that required surgery this spring and suffering intermittent concussion symptoms that wiped out the final third of last season for him.
“We’ve given him the opportunity to focus on his academics,” Kelly said. “For me, the most important thing is to see that he gets his degree this year. And then we can figure out if football is still an option for him.”
Cage had 10 tackles last season in a timeshare with Jarron Jones, now a practice squad rookie with the Dallas Cowboys, as an offensive tackle, no less.
“I think he’s feeling pretty good,” Kelly said of Cage’s symptoms, “but we’ve kind of had conversations about really focusing on his academics to make sure that he’s solid there. Then in January, if we feel like we wanted to restart this, we would sit down and have this conversation.”