By every account, coaches and non, he was great all summer and was absolutely hooping against tOSU when he hurt his knee. He was supposed to come back to practice ~ a week later but the knee just wasn't getting better and he finally didn't get cleared until a month later where they tried to use the SCSU game as his first live action since the injury happened.
The knee just wasn't getting better and he was just too far behind come December, and the Clemson game was where the tipping point was for everyone involved that if after this long the knee wasn't getting better he probably wasn't going to make a difference. His athleticism was just sapped from the injury + stopping and starting just wasn't helping it, even when cleared from doctors. So gave him some more rest, still wasn't better, everyone decided to pull the cord.
Wasn't really much to say about the injury in between Clemson and when they announced ~ a month later that they didn't say in the press release, just decided it was best to shut things down. But things can always seem/feel murky when there isn't an official diagnosis put out there.