Wasn't he sharing the load as your 3rd back with someone else? I know he pushed Lacy in spring but ultimately wasn't in the two-deep. You'll feel this more in the return game than on offense, barring further injury, of course.
I do wish Dee a speedy recovery. If it is torn 7-10 months seems feasible for him to see the field but you're looking at fall camp 2012 before he is back to NORMAL.
Just a note for those that may care, especially in athletes, a graft from a cadaver's patella tendon is used to replace the ACL in lieu of removing a piece from the existing patella tendon or pulling a tendon from the hamstring. Harvesting tissue from the existing patella tendon prolongs recovery and pulling from the hamstring reduces speed post-op. Largely worthless info, I know. I just posted in case any of you have had this done and had a different type of procedure and thus, different recovery.
Cochrane will certainly enjoy rebuilding Dee's quads
While I can't speak for the entire group, I can say we've had a bit of experience dealing with ACL, MCL, and knee injuries akin to those. I can remember us having a pretty in depth discussion during one game where we lost a player. "In depth" to the point we were watching the trainers and their on the field test. By the movement we saw, on TV mind you, of this players knee we could tell which muscle was gone and which they were testing. That's pretty bad/obsessive when you think about it, eh?
I don't like the fact our depth isn't as good as it used to be. But, I'm not upset at the idea we are now looking at TR, EL, and then JF.
If we take our rushing attempts last year and look at how they were divided up the numbers reflect MI taking 42% of the attempts, TR with 30%, EL with 15%, and the rest of the team (IE: RB's) carrying the other 10% of the time. What skews these numbers a bit is Mark missing the first two games, Trent missing most of the action in the last four games, and Eddie actually seeing action in more games than the other two. (11, 11, and 12 respectively)
FWIW, even taking into account Fowler had a lot of mop-up duty/4th quarter carries, he still had a better yards per carry average than any other RB on our roster.
I trust his HS coach when it comes to evaluating talent even on the D1 level. And, he's been very high on JF.
There were some of the drills conducted in the spring where JF "outshined/performed" the three ahead of him on the depth chart. What we don't have, right now, is that speed back in a role similar to Upchurch in '08. But, we DO have a few on the roster who have the talent to assume that role if the staff so chooses.
As far as offense is concerned...
I'd be a lot more concerned about how we'll do in the fall if we had lost one of our TE's.