SOUTH BEND —When spring practice opens Friday, March 20, it will mark exactly 14 months since Charles Jagusah last suited up for an official Notre Dame football game.
The Rock Island, Ill., prodigy started at left tackle in the CFP national championship game loss to Ohio State.
Sadly, after a string of surgeries on his left humerus in the wake of a serious Utility Terrain Vehicle (UTV) accident last July, it remains an open question as to when Jagusah, listed at 6-foot-5 and 325 pounds, will be able to take the field again.
“Charles is a strong-minded guy,” Rob Hunt, head athletic trainer for Notre Dame football, said Wednesday. “He’s been through a lot. He’s had some low times. When you think you’re moving forward and you’re where you want to be and you have a setback, that’s hard to take on.”
While Hunt expressed optimism at several points that Jagusah would return eventually, the fourth-year junior was scheduled for his fourth follow-up procedure on Wednesday since the major accident in Wyoming.
Jagusah, who exited spring practice as the expected starting right guard in 2025, had joined several Irish teammates on a Fourth of July weekend getaway.
“The growth is in the hard, and Charles is definitely equipped to handle that,” Hunt said. “He has done a really good job managing those emotions and that bumpy road in terms of his return.”
A detailed timeline of Charles Jagusah’s frustrating convalescence
While limited to endless rehab sessions over the past 8 ½ months, Jagusah has done his best to pass along useful tips to his fellow linemen. Team sports psychologist Joey Ramaeker has also counseled Jagusah through the process.
Jagusah, who started in the Sun Bowl win over Oregon State to close out his 2023 redshirt season, was on track to start the 2024 opener until suffering a torn pectoral muscle that August. He made it back for the final three games of the College Football Playoff, including the second half of the semifinal win over Penn State.
The humerus fracture was “really severe,” Hunt said, requiring 2 ½ hours of surgical cleanup to the wound before a Wyoming surgeon could even begin to set the bone. From there, the surgery took another two hours to stabilize the humerus itself.
“It wasn’t a failure in any way relative to what (the surgeon) did out there,” Hunt said. “It’s just the fact you get that much debris and soil into your body that you just don’t know what’s in there. And even as hard as they worked to clean it out and spend the time to do that, the challenge is identifying the organism that’s stopping it and getting the proper antibiotics going with that.”
Two weeks after that initial surgery, a cleanout of the wound closure was performed. Last September, a “hardware exchange” was performed because the bone was not healing.
That process had to be repeated again in January, at which point doctors identified “some infection that was in there, probably from the initial injury,” Hunt said.
After another round of “extensive antibiotics and antibiotic seeding into the bone,” Hunt said, Wednesday’s procedure was slated to reinsert the hardware and regraft and stabilize the bone.
“We’re extremely hopeful,” Hunt said. “We think the infection was probably inhibiting some of his bone growth. Now he’s in a position without infection … and this will allow him to fully heal.”
Any timeline for Jagusah’s recovery remains open-ended. A long road to recovery still lies ahead.
“He’s got more to go,” Hunt said. “There’s a lot more rehab involved. There’s a lot more time he has to put in there, but he’s gone through a lot. We do think he’ll return, but his timeline, as we shared at the early onset, is undetermined at this point.”
Should Jagusah make it all the way back, it stands to reason the NCAA would almost certainly approve a medical waiver granting him an additional season of eligibility. That could extend his college window with the Irish through the 2028 season.
“I’m an optimist, so I think it’s ‘when’ he returns,” Hunt said. “I won’t ever stand up here and take that away from any one of our guys unless we’re absolutely certain that it’s impossible for that to happen.
“I think there’s a strong chance that he’s right back where he was. The hard part is you make up all this lost time. You’re never going to get that back.”
Including a five-snap cameo against Stanford in 2023, Jagusah has appeared in just five of Notre Dame’s 41 games since his arrival.
“He’s a well-developed, super-strong guy (who has) played a lot of football,” Hunt said, “so he’s got some benefits there.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: The long and winding road continues for injured Notre Dame lineman
Reporting by Mike Berardino, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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