UVA tailback Perris Jones is still in ICU at UofL Hospital after emergency spine surgery following his traumatic injury in last Thursday’s 31-24 loss at #9 Louisville.
Virginia coach Tony Elliott told reporters on Tuesday at his weekly press conference that Jones is in ICU as part of the protocol with the surgery, which requires him to stay under watch in ICU for a week after the surgery.
Once he is able to be released, “hopefully this Friday,” Elliott told reporters, the plan from there is to transfer Jones, a sixth-year student-athlete currently enrolled in graduate school at UVA, to a rehabilitation center in Louisville that focuses on spinal-cord injuries.
It sounds like Jones is in for a long haul from there, likely facing several weeks of rehab.
Elliott said he had a chance to visit with Jones via Zoom on Monday.
“It was good to see his face. Man, he was smiling. He was happy, focused on his team, telling the guys to keep fighting,” the coach said.
Elliott said Jones’s family was not at the game, which meant they had to watch the horrific scene unfold on live TV, then had to travel from Northern Virginia to Louisvile not knowing what their son’s situation was.
“His family has been awesome, just the communication with them and obviously respecting their space, but just any of the communication that I received from his dad and his step-mom and his mom has been very positive, very encouraging,” Elliott said. “You can tell it’s a family of faith, and their faith is being tested, but man, they’re passing the test, because they’re standing strong and encouraging me just how strong they’ve been during this time.”
Jones, a former walk-on who was a three-time first-team all-state running back at Episcopal (Alexandria, Va.), returned for a sixth season in 2023 after the NCAA granted Virginia Football student-athletes an extra year of eligibility because the 2022 season ended prematurely following the Nov. 13, 2022, shooting deaths of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry.
Jones’ roommate, Mike Hollins, survived life-threatening injuries in the shooting, and returned to the football team in the spring, and is tied for the team lead in TDs this season, with seven.
Jones, a 2022 UVA alum, with degrees in African-American studies and English, now pursuing a master’s degree in educational psychology, was a first-year starter in the 2022 season, his fifth on Grounds.
He was second on the team in rushing last season with 365 yards, and earlier this season, he put up a career-high 134 yards on the ground on 12 carries in Virginia’s 27-13 win over William & Mary on Oct. 7.
Jones’ 393 rushing yards leads UVA in 2023.
Kobe Pace, the Clemson transfer who is second on the team in rushing, with 314 yards, is listed as the starter for this weekend’s game with Duke, with Hollins and junior Amaad Foston the two and three spots on the depth chart.
“Man, next man up. The mindset I’m trying to establish is it’s not a personal standard, it’s a position standard. Whoever is in there, doesn’t matter the body or the person that’s in there, the production is expected per the position,” Elliott said. “Kobe got to carry a little bit more, Mike has got to carry a little bit more, Foston is going to have to carry a little bit more, (Jack) Griese has got to be ready to go. Perris has kind of set the standard for what it looks like at the position, and everybody else has to be ready when their number is called to fulfill their production, and then obviously I know Coach Kitchings will do a great job of having a good plan for the ball to be distributed to other guys.”
Those guys have had a tough go of it themselves, after having to see a teammate on the field for an uncomfortable amount of time, then having to play the fourth quarter without knowing his condition – all of this days short of the one-year anniversary of the Nov. 13 mass shooting that took the lives of three of their teammates.
“As I said after the game, that’s the thing that you probably fear the most as a football player, is to have that type of injury,” Elliott said. “To see one of your teammates that you’re really close to endure, and it’s tough now because the communication is not necessarily what you want it to be, we’ve got to give Perris the space to recover before he’s able to just fully communicate the way that they want to – definitely I know it’s weighing on their hearts and on their minds, but I also know what Perris will tell them, just like he told us – because the staff was able to Zoom with him because Ashley (Murray, a member of the UVA Athletics training staff) is there, and so we were able to Zoom with him really quickly.
“His message was just keep fighting,” Elliott said. “Those guys will be ready to go, but it is tough because that is the closest guys to him on the team is his position mates. But he would tell them to keep on fighting.”
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