Coby Davis out for the season

WINSTON-SALEM – It’s the worst-case scenario for Coby Davis.

Again.

Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson announced Tuesday afternoon that Davis suffered a season-ending knee injury in the second half of last weekend’s win at Vanderbilt.

“Coby came back from an injury last year and put everything into it and was playing so well,” Clawson said. “… I feel so bad for him. I love the young man and he’s been an incredible part of our program for six years.

“Sometimes life isn’t fair. With Coby, this is not fair. He’ll handle it and make something positive because that’s the way he’s wired.”

Davis was covering a slot receiver on Saturday and went down with a non-contact injury, grabbing at the back of his left knee before his full body was on the turf. He gingerly walked off of the field and was later shown on the bench with ice wrapped on the knee.

The Upper Marlboro, Md., native told reporters after the game that he was “a little sore,” but that he thought he would be OK.

That can be the nature of torn ACLs – the extent of the damage sometimes isn’t known until a few days later.

Davis returned an interception for a touchdown against the Commodores for Wake’s first points of the game and talked before the season about how much he’s learned from his injury history.

There was no specific diagnosis given, but all signs point to it being the second torn ACL of Davis’ career – the other was the start of his injury history at Wake Forest, coming in the 2018 season opener at Tulane.

“His sophomore year in ’18 he was our starting safety and we really thought, like, ‘This is our next Jessie Bates,’” Clawson said. “He was that good.”

The injury history has been brutal: A torn ACL in 2018, a 2019 season that was a struggle to recover from the ACL, it was an ankle injury in 2020 that meant he only played in one game, and then a torn pectoral in the fourth game against Virginia ended Davis’ 2021 season.

On the football side of things, Wake Forest will move Isaiah Wingfield into the starting nickel spot. The grad transfer from Harvard who’s in his second season at Wake Forest had been in a fairly even time split with Davis in the first two games – Wingfield played 62 snaps; Davis played 57. Behind Wingfield is Jermal Martin Jr., a transfer from Division II California (Pa.) who’s been playing with his left hand in a hard cast.

On the personal side, it’s a crushing blow.

“Coby came back for a sixth year, he was playing so well,” Clawson said. “And he’s just a first-class, unbelievable teammate. We’ve had a lot of really good players here and some great players – Coby Davis is as good a person and teammate as we’ve had in our program.

“I feel sick for him.”

It’s not yet known if this will spell the end of Davis’ playing career.

Davis has an extra season of eligibility, given all of these injuries, and Clawson said he’s already been told that if he wants to come back, the program would welcome him for a seventh season.

But Clawson also said Davis is thinking about pursuing a coaching career.

“If he wants to coach, I’ll hire him on our staff,” Clawson said. “You just love the young man and everything he stands for and it was hard to enjoy that win in the locker room knowing that was the potential outcome of his injury.”

So while there exists the possibility Davis returns for a seventh season, he’ll have a stable future in Wake’s football program regardless what he chooses.

Clawson likened the situation when an older player has a season-ending injury to that of Justin Herron – a cruel irony, given Herron tore an ACL at Tulane in 2018, his fifth season in the program. He said his preference is to give the player time and space to make their decision.