Chase Rogers is headed back home.
The University of Louisiana tight end entered the NCAA transfer portal and will look to continue his collegiate career at Ole Miss as a walk-on. 247Sports first reported the news and second-year Ragin’ Cajuns head coach Billy Napier confirmed that Rogers was transferring during his press conference Thursday.
“Chase entered the portal three, four, five days, maybe even a week after the injury,” Napier said on Thursday. “Once he went through the process kind of researching his injury relative to playing football again, what that was going to look like, Chase came to us and kind of expressed that he may not even want to play football again. He’s just been through a lot — same foot broken for three years.”
Napier had revealed earlier this week that the 6-foot-4, 235-pound redshirt sophomore tight end from Pass Christian, Mississippi had broken his foot and could possibly miss the entire 2019 season.
It was yet another setback in the collegiate career of Rogers.
Rogers played in eight games, including two starts, as a true freshman but suffered a foot injury that cut his first season with the Ragin’ Cajuns short. The following spring, the first under new head coach Napier, Rogers injured his foot once again which forced him to miss the majority of last season. Rogers appeared in only three games in 2018 which allowed UL to redshirt him.
Then came the third foot injury last weekend.
“The most important thing to me is that Chase handles this adversity well,” Napier said. “I hope he has a healthy return. I hope the guy plays football again. I really do.”
In his two seasons at UL, Rogers hauled in 8 receptions for 85 yards and one touchdown — a 13-yard pass from Levi Lewis against South Alabama in 2017.
Rogers was a three-star prospect when he signed with UL out of St. Stanislaus back in 2017. In high school, Rogers caught 216 passes for 3,729 yards and 44 touchdowns from future LSU quarterback Myles Brennan.
Rogers, who originally had committed to Tennessee, was ranked as the No. 30 tight end in the nation, and the No. 11 ranked player overall in the state of Mississippi by 247Sports.
In addition to the offers from Tennessee and UL, Rogers had scholarship offers from California, Colorado State, Memphis, Mississippi State and Ole Miss among others.
