ORLANDO, Fla. — McKenzie Milton has found a way to be present this spring with the Knights football team. In between rehabbing his knee and finishing up final exams, he can be spotted at nearly every practice, and you can’t keep him out of the quarterback room.
- UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton discusses devastating injury
- USF player who hit him was target of online bullying, attacks
- Milton, Mazzi Wilkins recently met to put closure to incident
Now, almost five months after the gruesome accident that dislocated his knee, our Despina Barton sits down with Milton to recount that day and why he is fueled to return to the field.
“I definitely remember both sidelines coming off and remember the training staff being over me very quickly,” Milton said.
Only McKenzie Milton can offer up this perspective from Black Friday’s accident inside Raymond James Stadium.
“They were checking for my pulse, replacing my knee. And then going into the locker room, checking for my pulse again, and they couldn’t feel the pulse, and I remember going to Tampa General and they took a (CT) scan and they thought we had to do immediate surgery, which they did,” Milton recounts.
“So it was a lot that happened in the span of probably two and a half hours. It was definitely a lot, I woke up; next thing I know, I got some metal pins in my leg, and we had surgery, and it was a success.”
The hit or that day in its entirety doesn’t haunt Milton. In fact he says he rarely thinks about it. That might be hard to imagine but he’s moving forward, getting stronger and holds no animosity toward Mazzi Wilkins, the USF player who dislocated his knee November 23.
“I felt he was making a football play, and you can see immediately after his reaction, he had no ill will. There he was, just playing his butt off, and I was doing the same,” Milton said of the tackle.
While Milton was recovering in the hospital days after the accident — the guy on the other side of the hit became an online target for bullying and verbal attacks.
“I got death threats, things like that happened but little did they know we were still communicating,” Wilkins explained.
“As soon as it was happened, I got down on a knee and I prayed for him – I didn’t even know him. I prayed for him, and that’s due to the fact that we played the sport – we don’t play it to injure anybody, we play it to get out of situations, to express ourselves to come together.”
And last weekend, the two did just that, coming face-to-face for the first time, to put closure to this incident.
Five months after the horrific injury, the 21-year-old says he is getting back to a normal life.
“I should be walking here pretty soon with my brace but the only thing I can’t do right now is run, jump and play football,” Milton added.
He says he is going to be patient and return when his body is ready. Until that time comes, he’s etching out a hybrid role with the team.
“I’m trying to be a player/coach and do whatever I can in the QB room and get ready to play. Whatever knowledge I can give the young guys –you know because I played a lot of ball and just help them out with that,” Milton continued. “I am just taking this opportunity; I want to get into coaching one day so I think this is a good jump start.”