Harold Perkins injury: What LSU coach Brian Kelly said about his injury after UCLA win
This story was updated with new information.
BATON ROUGE — LSU football star junior outside linebacker Harold Perkins left the team's win over UCLA on Saturday night with a knee injury.
With the Tigers leading the Bruins 31-17 in the middle of the fourth quarter, Perkins went down after a tackle attempt with what appeared to be a lower right leg injury.
LSU football coach Brian Kelly told reporters following the team's win over the Bruins that "he's injured" but wouldn't commit further than that.
"We'll get all the diagnostics done tonight and we'll have a better answer for you tomorrow," Kelly said.
Perkins remained down on the field for a couple of minutes, being worked on by a number of team trainers. He was helped up and assisted to the sideline where he was immediately ushered into the medical tent.
Shortly thereafter, Perkins left the sideline and headed back to the team's locker room.
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Before leaving with the injury, Perkins recorded two tackles for the Tigers.
If Perkins is injured enough to miss any number of weeks, the prognosis for the overall defense will certainly be questionable. Perkins is LSU's best professional football prospect, he's projected to be a first two-day NFL draft pick.
He's filled a number of roles for LSU so far just through four games this season and has semeed to have settled in at the outside linebacker Sam position. While his stats haven't been popping out off the page, Perkins serves as one of the defense's top leaders.
Kelly said postgame he hopes Perkins won't miss much time but if he does, his faith is the rest of the defense won't waver.
"We've got great leaders like (middle linebacker) Greg Penn on that side of the ball," Kelly said. "We hope (Perkins) is OK. We've got Greg Penn, we've got Whit Weeks, West (Weeks) will be back next week and he's played really good football for us.
"So we can still stay in our Buffalo package, we can go back into our Dime package with dropping (safety Major Burns) down. So we've got a lot of options there. We hope (Perkins) is OK and back for us. But we'll able to move into other packages that resemble what we've been doing."
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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Harold Perkins injury: LSU football star exits UCLA game with injury
