Farmer’s injury can buy him more time

Back in October, wide receivers coach Tee Martin offered one of the best soundbites of the 2012 season as he attempted to explain then-sophomore George Farmer’s inability to crack the wide receiver rotation despite his abundance of talent.

“God has blessed that kid with a lot of tools,” Martin said. “I joke with him, ‘You’re a Ferrari.’ And everything has to work right for that Ferrari to run the way you want it to run.”

Yet every time that Ferrari seemingly turns a corner, it stalls on the side of the road and gets passed by 2004 Toyota Matrixes, bearing 150,000 miles and a jelly donut-stained passenger seat (sorry, Mom).

Unfortunately for Farmer, this time around, his injury recovery will not be measured in days but in months. While participating in a noncontact drill on Tuesday, the 6-foot-1, 205-pound speedster planted his left leg awkwardly, tearing both his ACL and MCL. His pending knee surgery will sideline him for the 2013 season.

Many will invariably harp on Farmer’s budding “injury-prone” reputation, with this latest setback adding to their confirmation bias. But unlike many of his other past ailments, including frequent hamstring flare-ups since his arrival in the summer of 2011, this one was not preventable through more pre-practice stretching or post-practice icing on the trainer’s table.

As redshirt sophomore running back Tre Madden, who suffered a nearly identical noncontact knee injury last spring, can attest, there is neither rhyme nor reason for such a frightening injury.

When Farmer returns to the USC practice field, both of his former Serra High School teammates — Robert Woods and Marqise Lee — will, in all likelihood, have already departed for the NFL as marquee draft picks and franchise saviors. That’s what makes Farmer’s eventual return all the more interesting.

Rewind time to 2011 and tell any of the high school football scouts that Lee, not Farmer, would claim the Biletnikoff as a sophomore and they might have had you institutionalized. Farmer was rated 12th in ESPN’s ballyhooed top-150 list of prospects — first at his position and first in the fertile recruiting grounds of California — whereas Lee rocketed up the charts later in the recruitment process, topping out at No. 96 on the list.

No doubt it’s laughable now to think Lee barely slipped within the top-10 California high school players during his recruitment. But Farmer used to outshine Lee daily, as they played alongside each other on the same practice field and on Friday nights. In fact, for much of his high school career, the prolific duo of Farmer and Woods blocked Lee from earning significant snaps on offense.

Roles have since reversed at USC, as once-in-a-generation talents Woods and Lee have earned the right to be consistently targeted throughout the past two seasons at the expense of Farmer and basically anyone else in cardinal and gold who has run a route at some point. But that’s precisely the reason why Farmer’s injury marks a blessing of sorts: It buys him time.

This spring, at best, Farmer had solidified his position as the No. 3 wide receiver behind Lee and sophomore Nelson Agholor. Yet, in a USC offense that will break in a new starting quarterback and is expected to emphasize a power running game and utilize its tight ends more, Farmer’s production this season would have been marginal at best anyway. His greatest impact might have been felt on special teams as a returner or gunner.

By delaying the expiration date on his eligibility after redshirting this season, Farmer will return in 2014 to a less-crowded depth chart at receiver, where he could presumably pair with Agholor as another vertical deep threat. And if he proves durable after his recovery, he will have two seasons — instead of one — to show what he can do with his high school teammates out of the picture. Simply put, once out from underneath Woods and Lee’s shadow in 2014-15, Farmer will have his first real opportunity since stepping on campus to play a meaningful role on game days and put his considerable talents on film for NFL scouts.

Of course, other unfortunate scenarios might unfurl for Farmer. Some of the younger, talented wide receivers might seize the additional repetitions made available by his injury as an opportunity to convince Martin and the rest of the coaching staff to accelerate their development time. Upon his return, Farmer might never fully regain his athleticism and might harbor distrust in making the same cuts he once did. For an example of this, look no further than junior running back D.J. Morgan, who still, at times, expresses a lack of confidence in his knee, surgically-repaired after an injury he sustained as a high school senior.

But neither of these scenarios looms as daunting as spending three seasons competing against at least two members of the Woods-Lee-Agholor troika for playing time, then trying to make a last-ditch case for an NFL future as a senior. Though it’s impossible to predict how Farmer will respond, at least he can take solace in the fact that the additional year of eligibility his injury affords will offer him a better chance of playing in the NFL.

 

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