Tre Lamar: Linebacker says he's fully healthy and ready for 2018

Lamar injured his shoulder on this play against FSU

by Hannah Rogerson - Correspondent - Fri Mar 09 08:21:04 GMT-04:00 2018

CLEMSON- Tre Lamar is ready for a repeat of last year’s football season, minus a shoulder injury and with the addition of a national championship.

Lamar, the 6’3, 240-pound linebacker from Roswell, GA, suffered a shoulder injury against Florida St. in early November. He missed the rest of the regular season, the ACC Championship Game and the Sugar Bowl.

Lamar met with the media after Wednesday’s practice, and he was asked if he knew right away if something was wrong.

Lamar responded with, “Something just felt wrong, yeah I knew right away”.

Lamar then said he finally feels 100 percent.

“I would say right now,” he said. “There were setbacks here and there, just trying to get strong just because I had lost a lot of strength. With those kinds of injuries, there’s not as much of a timetable like with a broken bone or something like that, so I was never completely sure, but the trainers took care of me.

“Just with this kind of injury there isn’t an exact timetable and just whenever you get your strength back in that arm, so probably just not knowing exactly when and not having that timetable is probably the hardest thing.”

Asked if he was timid during spring practice after just getting his shoulder back healthy, Lamar said, “I wouldn’t say so, the trainers fixed my pads up nice. They are a little raised on the shoulder pad, just on impact, I won’t have that same impact on my shoulder.”

As a linebacker, a lot of Lamar’s job relies on his teammates on the defensive line. His reaction to hearing of Christian Wilkins’s return to Clemson football represented just about all of Clemson.

“You don’t know but when you hear the news a smile comes to your face,” Lamar told TigerNet. “You’re only as good as your d-line, when you have a d line as good as we’ve got you’ve got room to make a lot of plays. They came back hungry you know, they didn’t just come back to go through the motions for their last year, they want to get that championship for this last year and it shows on the field,” he said. “When you’ve got guys like Dexter and Christian who can take double teams like that and leave you free in your gap, that makes the world of difference for a linebacker.”

On Mike Jones, Jr

“In reality, just because I came as a mid-year too, you’re basically a high schooler out there going with dudes that have been in college 3 or 4 years and there’s always a transfer period that you gotta get through but I think he’s doing a great job so far.”

On Shaq Smith

“Shaq’s been playing really good, he’s starting to get more and more comfortable out there and it’s starting to show, just how he’s making calls and making plays now a-days that he wouldn’t have made as a freshman, you see him making now.”

His goals for the spring

“I want to work on my pass coverage first and for-most, just knowing exactly where I’m supposed to be as well as where everyone else is supposed to be.”

*TigerNet intern Hannah Rogerson contributed to this report.