On Monday during his weekly press conference, Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze was able to give a little more detail on Charlie Brewer’s health and how he sees the depth at quarterback entering Saturday’s game against UAB.
Brewer was named Liberty’s starting quarterback two weeks ago, and he took to the field this past Saturday night at Southern Miss. Towards the end of Liberty’s second possession of the game, Brewer injured his right throwing hand on a 2nd down pass attempt when it came in contact with the helmet of a Southern Miss defender on his follow through throwing motion.
“Charlie is having his scan tomorrow and then surgery to follow,” Freeze said on Monday. “The scan is just to see if they are going to put pins or a plate in it. The plate would be the shorter term, is my understanding, I’m not sure which one they are going with yet.”
Brewer suffered a fractured hand at the base of his thumb. The injury timeline, according to Coach Freeze, is 5-8 weeks depending on the type of surgery. If they put a plate in it, it would be a shorter time frame, closer to 5-6 weeks, and if it is pins, it would be closer to 7-8 weeks, according to Freeze. Five weeks would have Brewer able to return as soon as Liberty’s game on Oct. 8 at UMass. Eight weeks would have him able to return on Nov. 5 at Arkansas, following Liberty’s bye week.
“Very hurt. Very, very disappointed and down,” Freeze said of Brewer’s mood following the injury. “Obviously he was wanting to rewrite his last chapter of college football quite differently than what it’s going to be. That’s one of those challenges in life that we get. I just talked to our team for 30 minutes on our theme for this week that I had planned a long time ago and it was a message that I’m sure Charlie needed to hear this morning. We’re all on a Potter’s Wheel. We all have cracks, we all got fractures, and sometimes we even get broken, but we’ve got to get back on the wheel and repair those and stay in the fight and don’t lose heart. That’s challenging sometimes. I’m sure he’s going through that right now and hurt for him.”
Brewer was initially replaced by backup quarterback Johnathan Bennett. The Flames’ struggled to find consistency on offense with Bennett behind center, and, trailing 21-14 in the fourth quarter, Freeze decided to bring in Kaidon Salter.
“I didn’t think we had any juice at that moment,” Freeze said of his decision to bench Bennett. “Obviously the pick six gave them the lead, I believe. He had missed a couple open throws. I just thought maybe, let’s see if Kaidon Salt can give us a little spark.”
Salter would engineer two fourth quarter scoring drives, each one tying the game after Southern Miss had scored to take a one touchdown lead. He would finish the game completing 8 of 13 passes for 148 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception, throwing a 23-yard touchdown pass with 36 seconds left to force overtime.
“Play one of them,” Freeze said on Monday when asked what his plan was for his quarterbacks in this week’s game against UAB. “We’re fixing to get together as soon as they get through here. We will start looking at what the plan is and what suits everybody between JB, Nate (Hampton), and Kaidon and kind of go from there.”
The 6’1″, 195 pound Salter signed with the Tennessee Volunteers out of high school where he attended Cedar Hill High School in Cedar Hill, Texas. He was a top 50 national prospect and was ranked as the No. 6 quarterback nationally and No. 5 prospect out of Texas in the class of 2021, according to 247Sports. He is the highest rated quarterback out of high school to play at Liberty.
Out of high school, Salter had over 20 offers including Liberty, Arizona State, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Michigan State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, and Syracuse. Liberty and head coach Hugh Freeze were the first reported offer to Salter in April 2019.
Salter was dismissed from the Tennessee football program in late June 2021 following his second run-in with police in his first few months on campus, both drug related charges. In the most recent incident, he confessed to having four grams of marijuana.
“I couldn’t be prouder,” Freeze said of Salter’s performance at Southern Miss. “I thought he elevated the whole team, all the players around him. There’s been no secret, we’ve felt like he is extremely talented. It’s just a matter of him handling everything that comes with playing that position. Hopefully, this motivates him to try and make sure that the details of his life, the details of preparation, the details of studying the game like it needs to be studied, and the offense like it needs to be studied, hopefully that motivates him because there’s no question, I mean everyone saw and witnessed what his potential is, obviously we’ve got to eliminate the disaster plays.”
Freeze hesitated to outright name a starter for this week’s game. He referred to some of the mistakes Salter made during the game Saturday night. He did not set the correct protections at times, attempted to hand the ball off to a running back to his left when the play was designed to go to the right, and made a couple of wrong decisions in the passing game. That’s all to be expected though for a quarterback that was third on the depth chart entering the game, had limited practice reps, and was getting his first extended playing time at the college level. Freeze wants him to focus on learning the offense and preparing the right way this week.
“He’s very capable of doing it, we just got to lock him in and make sure we feel very confident about the entire game plan should he be the guy,” Freeze said.
Throughout the off-season and into training camp, Salter and Brewer were two of four quarterbacks competing for the starting job for the Flames, alongside Johnathan Bennett and Nate Hampton. Bennett was Malik Willis’ backup last year and has been in the system longer than any other quarterback on the roster. He played the second and third quarter in relief of Brewer Saturday night before Freeze turned to Salter.
“I didn’t think JB played bad,” said Freeze. “Obviously the turnover right there, and he missed a couple of open receivers, but he also did some good things. I think Nate can do some good things. I said that all along, I thought we had four guys that could make some plays. Let’s see how the week goes.”
