LOS ANGELES — Doctors treating Stafon Johnson for throat injuries he suffered during a weight-lifting accident said the USC senior tailback will play football again but are uncertain if he can return this season, Trojans coach Pete Carroll said Tuesday.

Carroll said doctors at California Hospital Medical Center characterized both the seven hours of surgery he underwent and his recovery as encouraging. Johnson surprised doctors by being awake and alert Tuesday morning and has been non-verbally communicating with family members and teammates.
“Fortunately this morning we got great reports about Stafon responding to the accident and also the surgery,” Carroll said. “He was awake this morning, communicating with everybody and his spirits were good. He’s not talking but was doing his way of making some sense of stuff, writing and all that, very, very uplifting for his mom and family and all and our guys who got the chance to get down there.
“This morning everyone has been very encouraged so it’s a great sign. He was out all night last night and nobody could really communicate with him at all until this morning. So that’s the first time and the signs were great.”
A weight bar slipped out of Johnson’s hands and landed on his throat as he began the final set of lifts Monday.
“(A) most unfortunate accident, it was an absolute accident,” Carroll said. “It just hit him wrong and he’s had obvious consequences.”
While splitting tailback duties primarily with Joe McKnight, Johnson scored a team-high five touchdowns in the Trojans’ first four games this season. Johnson has five career 100-yard rushing games and scored nine TDs in 2008. He has been projected as a fourth-round NFL draft choice by some draft analysts.
“Doctors said today they expect him to play football again, they don’t know when,” Carroll said.
“...It’s very open ended right now. The doctors can’t say, they can’t predict, they have to wait and see but they do say he will be able to play and there won’t be any problem with that. But we don’t know when.”
In what Carroll described as “an unbelievable stroke of synchronicity,” Johnson’s mother Kim Mallory was working at California Hospital Medical Center at the time of her son’s accident.
Carroll said his team was still struggling to make sense of the accident.
“He’s a wonderful kid in this program, he means something to everybody here,” Carroll said. “Stafon has been a spiritual leader and a leader on the field in all ways for a long time and a beloved guy so this is something that does affect you and we all will feel it for some time.”
But Carroll added he didn’t think the incident would impact the Trojans preparations for Saturday’s game at Cal.
“We’re concerned about him right now,” Carroll said. “The conversation about the effect of this and the effect on the game is really not even an issue for us, I don’t think at all. I think our concern now is for Stafon and his family and everybody handing what’s going on. We’ll be OK.”