Former Gamecock QB Jake Bentley dealing with another knee injury at new school
Former South Carolina quarterback Jake Bentley is battling another injury amid a career-best season at South Alabama.
Bentley tore his left MCL in Sun Belt South Alabama’s most recent game against Troy, AL.com reported, though he hasn’t been ruled out for the rest of the season yet.
According to Creg Stephenson of AL.com, team doctors told Bentley he wouldn’t play in the Jaguars’ upcoming game against Appalachian State, but he could potentially get to return to finish his sixth season of college football.
MRI results revealed Bentley tore his MCL last week and also had “looseness” in an anterior cruciate ligament, South Alabama head coach Kane Wommack said to AL.com, but that issue could’ve come from a previous knee injury.
Bentley underwent two ACL procedures early in his playing career, tearing his left ACL in eighth grade and his right ACL before his freshman year of high school.
Bentley, who spent four years with the Gamecocks from 2016-19, stayed generally healthy during his time in Columbia, though he missed one game in 2018 after spraining a knee and then had a season-ending foot injury in South Carolina’s first game of 2019.
Bentley transferred to Utah in 2020 and then to South Alabama, where he’d been having the best season of his career before tearing his MCL last Saturday.
Bentley completed a career-high 70.2% of his passes for 2,122 yards, 15 touchdowns and five interceptions through the Jaguars’ nine games of 2021. He passed a perfect 3 for 3 for 49 yards before leaving South Alabama’s eventual 31-24 loss at Troy. The Jaguars sit at 5-4 in 2021.
The former Gamecock had already set program records at South Alabama through the first half of the season, including a single-game best 389 passing yards against Georgia Southern (also third-most in the country that week) and the highest number of touchdowns in a single game with four against both UL-Monroe and Arkansas State.
While at South Carolina, Bentley passed for 7,385 yards, 54 touchdowns and five interceptions. He earned the South Carolina program record for most yards in a single game when he passed for 510 yards in the Gamecocks’ 56-35 loss to Clemson in 2018.
Bentley also led the Gamecocks to their last bowl berth, a 28-0 loss to Virginia in the 2018 Belk Bowl, and their last bowl victory, a 26-18 win over Michigan in the 2018 Outback Bowl.
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Former Gamecock QB Jake Bentley dealing with another knee injury at new school."
