Yeah, if he was healthy and going to play, they would have said so. Now, they still have another week to get him in game shape. But the evasion shows he is not healthy, and word on the street is the opposite of what was on that Pod — he did not practice this past week, he has cracked ribs, and they’re going to shoot him up before the game and see if he can go.
This squares with what I've been able to find.
I get that there's a notion that "Oh, they could just be playing it close to the vest so ND has to prepare for two guys", but I imagine ND is going to fully prepare for what they've seen from Virginia's offense with Armstrong in and adjust as needed for the new guy, since there probably isn't enough legitimate film of him to form a gameplan around.
Doesn't help that the cracked ribs he suffered were apparently on his throwing side. If that's the case, I can't imagine why he'd play. You can be up to your nostrils in painkillers, but that isn't going to do jack to help your core. You need a stabilized core to throw with any sort of power and with cracked ribs, that's pretty much impossible, which is why I was pretty confident he cracked something against BYU, because he clearly couldn't throw the ball with any sort of power after the hit. If it was a bruise, that wouldn't be an issue. We saw Book throw with bruised ribs. It probably hurt like absolute blood hell, but he could do it. Cracked ribs are different story altogether.
