Rudolph plays with cracked rib

Oklahoma State quarterback Mason Rudolph did not miss any playing time after suffering a cracked rib against Texas last October. The injury was kept hush-hush from the media.

STILLWATER — Mason Rudolph played more than half of last season with a cracked rib.

The Oklahoma State quarterback suffered the injury against Texas on Oct. 1, but he didn’t miss any starts because of it.

“No one really knows that at all,” Rudolph said of the rib injury in an interview with The Oklahoman. “We kept that in house.”

Rudolph was hurt early in the second quarter of the Texas game when he scored a touchdown on a 10-yard run. He dove for the goal line and was sandwiched between two defenders.

“It was like, ‘Something’s not right,’” he said. “I could barely move.”

But he didn’t let on about being hurt. He even threw two more touchdown passes that day in OSU’s 49-31 blowout. It wasn’t until the next day that tests revealed the cracked rib.

Rudolph sat out a couple days of practice the next week in preparation for Iowa State, but wearing extra padding with his flak jacket, he not only started against the Cyclones but also threw for 351 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions in the Cowboys’ come-from-behind win.

Rudolph doesn’t remember the day all that fondly.

“It was so frustrating,” he said. “The rotation (of the torso in the throwing motion) would just kill me. I couldn’t throw it that far. That whole game was a struggle.”

By the time OSU beat West Virginia the last Saturday of October, Rudolph could tell that the rib was starting to heal, but still, it wasn’t completely healed until after the regular season. “It was rough,” he said. In seven regularseason games after the injury, Rudolph threw for a combined 2,089 yards and led the Cowboys to a 6-1 record.