Indiana football QB Kurtis Rourke says he’s ‘pretty close to 100 percent’ healthy after thumb injury

Indiana football has been relatively healthy for the majority of the 2024 season but one of the more concerning moments of the year was with quarterback Kurtis Rourke when he missed time with a thumb injury he suffered in the Nebraska win.

After missing the second half of the Nebraska game and the entire Washington matchup, Rourke was back in the lineup for the past two games for the Hoosiers.

With three weeks since his return to action and off of a bye week, Rourke is feeling close to 100 percent.

“I feel great.  I feel really good,” Rourke said after practice on Tuesday.  “That was one of the things I was looking forward to the most with the bye week is getting my thumb heal up, and not beat it up, and not have to throw five to six days a week.  I was really excited with the progress that was made, and I’m feeling pretty close to 100 percent now.”

Rourke has been one of the top players in the conference this season, especially at the quarterback position. He has thrown for 2,410 yards with 21 touchdowns and just four interceptions. On the year, he’s completing 71.4 percent of his passes.

Despite missing 1.5 games, and additional time this year with the dominating wins IU has seen, Rourke is third in the Big Ten in passing touchdowns and is sixth in passing yards. He leads the Big Ten in quarterback rating and yards per attempt.

Even with nursing his injury over the last few weeks, he hasn’t missed time in practice and that has resulted in IU’s high-powered offense rarely missing a beat.

“I wouldn’t say decrease reps … but the rest of the (first) team, we kinda took a couple reps off to manage load and I was obviously part of that,” Rourke said. “So that helped with my thumb just to take a load off, even if it was 20 throws a day to help with extra healing.”

Rourk’s performance this year has been the backbone for Indiana football starting off 10-0, the most wins in IU program history.

With Indiana nearly back to full health, it turns its attention to a top-5 matchup with No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday afternoon, with a lot of College Football Playoff implications.

IU is currently the 7-seed in the playoff projections, playing host to Ole Miss in the first round.

SEE ALSO: Say what? Joey Galloway thinks benching Kurtis Rourke to avoid injury is best-case to keep Indiana football in CFP field

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