With his dad watching over his shoulder, Zac Etheridge happily talked about getting medical clearance to play football this season, a little less than nine months after a scary neck injury left him motionless on the field.

"Just getting the opportunity to go out there and go at it again, it's just a tremendous opportunity that god has blessed me with," Etheridge said.

The meeting with reporters took place a few hours after Etheridge underwent a series of range-of-motion tests and MRIs on his injured neck in Birmingham. The news was as good as he could have hoped.

"He said it was great," Etheridge said. "If you look at it, you couldn't tell that I had an injury."

Etheridge tore ligaments in his neck and cracked his C5 vertebrae while trying to make a tackle last Oct. 31 against Ole Miss. In the time since, he pondered what he would do if he didn't get clearance.

"(They said) football wasn't everything and you could move on," Etheridge said. "But with the passion I have for it, it's hard for me to say no to the game."

Here are a few other things of note that Etheridge said:

• Etheridge's doctor told him he has a 2 percent greater chance than anybody else of suffering a recurrence of the injury. "He had that little nervousness of me going back and playing," Etheridge said. "Of course I'm at a higher risk but everyone out there is at a risk playing football. It's just that play and that moment that caused the injury. Everybody can go out there and get the same injury. It's a chance that I'm taking. It's my decision to return to the field. The main thing is that everything is healed up perfect."

• He won't be thrown into full contact right away. "Whatever the medical staff's got planned, it's a slow process," he said. "You can't just go out there and start hitting everybody, which I would love to do. But they've got a plan that I've got to follow by and get myself ready for the season."

• He hoped he would be ready for the season opener. "I don't doubt it," he said. "There's no reason I shouldn't be. We done did everything right to this point, and I'm sure we'll keep carrying on with it, and I'm looking forward to the first game."

• He wore the stabilizing halo for three months, then wore a neck brace for another few months.

• Etheridge didn't think he'd have any hesitancy to take a shot at a player coming across the middle as he would have before the injury. "Them are your dream shots. If someone comes across the middle, I'm going to take it. No hesitation at all. You might find yourself a step slower at first but once you get out there and practice with the guys and get the thud going and get in the tempo of things, you kind of gain that confidence each day. It will be a process of me just gaining that confidence and getting back out there."

• Etheridge's father, Donald Kelly, was at the media session. He admitted he's a little nervous about his son getting back on the field. "There will be a little nerves there," he said. "But we’ll shake it off and we’re going to go forward with the season, and look for everything else to go positive."