{"id":644790,"date":"2026-01-01T05:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T05:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/644790\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T05:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T05:09:14","slug":"duke-lineman-suffers-gruesome-injury-in-sun-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/644790\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke lineman suffers gruesome injury in Sun Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This one wasn\u2019t pretty.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>During the Sun Bowl on New Year\u2019s Eve, Duke defensive end Kobe Smith suffered a gruesome leg injury during a collision with a Blue Devil teammate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Smith\u2019s shin appeared to go limp after going leg-to-leg with fellow lineman Tyshon Reed, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kingRick4200\/status\/2006465707022889058?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">the brutal replay showed.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Duke defensive lineman Kobe Smith being consoled by teammates after suffering a gruesome leg injury on Wednesday. fsh733\/X<\/p>\n<p>A cart was brought out for Smith, whose leg was put in an air cast.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Smith was sitting up and awake, receiving hugs and handshakes from his teammates before the cart took off for the locker room.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Moments before Duke defensive lineman Kobe Smith was carted off to the locker room. ksh733\/X<\/p>\n<p>After showing the horrific injury on the broadcast, CBS play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler said they were \u201cnot going to show that one again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith, a freshman, had 10 total tackles and one forced fumble across four games this season coming into the bowl matchup. <\/p>\n<p>Duke held on to beat Arizona State 42-39, in the thrilling shootout. <\/p>\n<p>Duke coaches, players and staff surrounding lineman Kobe Smith after the brutal leg injury. ksh733\/X<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Devils improbably <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/12\/07\/sports\/dukes-win-in-acc-title-game-opens-door-for-james-madison\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won the ACC championship<\/a> with an overtime win over No. 16 Virginia. <\/p>\n<p>It was the school\u2019s first outright Atlantic Coast Conference football championship since 1962.<\/p>\n<p>The victory wasn\u2019t enough enough to get Duke and its 8-5 record into the College Football Playoff. <\/p>\n<p>They, instead, opened the door for James Madison to be the second Group of Five team to make the playoff. <\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This one wasn\u2019t pretty.\u00a0 During the Sun Bowl on New Year\u2019s Eve, Duke defensive end Kobe Smith suffered&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[331,7643,7,49,48,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-644790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-duke-blue-devils","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115818120254554408","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}