Bad news from practice today: Junior middle linebacker Tray Blackmon will have season-ending surgery to insert a screw in his cracked right wrist. He'll have the procedure done early next week.

"It’s just one of those situations where we’re going to go ahead and do it," head coach Tommy Tuberville said. He didn’t respond as well as we hoped. … That’s tough luck for him.”

Courtney Harden and Adam Herring will battle for the backup middle linebacker job behind sophomore Josh Bynes. Chris Evans, who splits time on the outside with Merrill Johnson, can also play inside.

Blackmon injured the wrist against LSU on Sept. 20 and has been playing with a club on his right hand ever since.

Some quick thoughts:

While obviously you have to feel bad for Tray, I don't think this affects the defense that much, considering how well Bynes has played. Even if Blackmon came back healthy, I don't think it would have been a lock that he overtook Bynes as the starter anyway.

Consider Tuberville's quote Wednesday: "The big thing about a middle linebacker is they have to know just about what everybody does in terms of alignment. He has to get everybody lined up. In the LSU game, we made several mistakes in terms of getting people lined up after they'd made a movement. Then the next week, Tennessee did the same thing and that didn't happen."

It's worth noting that Blackmon started at MLB against LSU and Bynes did against Tennessee.