Mike Dingle's return to full football activities is on hold for a while longer.

The redshirt freshman linebacker will be limited to non-contact drills during the first two weeks of Texas Tech football preseason practice, coach Joey McGuire said Tuesday. Dingle played in four games the first half of the 2023 season.

He's been withheld from contact since mid-October for what McGuire told the Avalanche-Journal in May is "continuous stingers." The medical team has been trying to get strength back in his shoulder, McGuire said.

McGuire compared the recovery protocol to that of a player with a concussion history, trying to keep him out of contact when out of season to allow maximum time for healing.

"That injury is an injury that we do not want to put him in any contact until he's a hundred percent," McGuire said. "He's pretty dang close, but we're going to put him in a yellow jersey."

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Coming out of spring, McGuire listed Dingle as co-third team with Trent Low at boundary inside linebacker, behind Jacob Rodriguez and Bryce Ramirez.

The Red Raiders started preseason practice Wednesday. Dingle was a participant, but teams aren't allowed by NCAA rule to wear pads the first day. McGuire said first-team left tackle Sterling Porcher also will be limited at the beginning after he aggravated a hamstring. An MRI did not show anything worrisome, McGuire said, so Porcher is expected back within a week.

He'll do some light individual work in the first week. Starting right guard Caleb Rogers will practice in Porcher's spot at left tackle until Porcher returns, McGuire said.

Wide receiver Micah Hudson, who progressed from half volume of football activities to three-quarter volume in July, has been fully cleared, McGuire said. He's coming off arthroscopic knee surgery in January.

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Texas Tech football deep snapper Rylan Vagana added to scholarship roll

Tech initially recruited deep snapper Rylan Vagana as a preferred walk-on, but the freshman from Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei was placed on scholarship as soon as joined the team in January, a Tech athletics spokesman. Jackson Knotts, the team's starting deep snapper for 38 games, is continuing to trend toward an early season return coming off knee surgery at the end of last season.

"We went and got Rylan Vagana, who's probably the number-one deep snapper in the country with that class," special teams coordinator Kenny Perry said. "I thought it was great that we went ahead and made him a scholarship player, because you don't have the opportunity to go after those guys very often."

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This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Mike Dingle return pushed back as Texas Tech football starts practice