Tim Tebow has been laid up. Same with Sam Bradford and Jermaine Gresham. Dez Bryant just got a year long suspension. Rob Gronkowski? Out for the year. And on top of that, 50% of the Pac-10 (including Oregon) has dealt with some variety of quarterback injuries in 2009.
Point is, everybody’s dealing with it. In the final injury report prior to last week’s games, Oregon had the second fewest injury issues of any team in the conference. Oregon’s not unique and if they’re a championship caliber team, they’ll fight through it.
Sure, it feels a little star-crossed to see the Duck quarterback suffer an injury for the fourth time in five years, but it doesn’t have to make or break the season. They’ve picked up the pieces before. In fact, Oregon’s worst season in those five years was the one in which a quarterback didn’t get hurt.
Eventually, the injury bug can break you (see Dennis Dixon circa 2007). But remember that up to that point, the team had survived a rash of injuries including season-enders to two of their top wide receivers as well as the second best running back and they still kept chugging along.
Now, five games into 2009, Oregon has reached that point where they are going to have to fight through some adversity and some young guys are going to have to grow up quickly (hey, who let Ernie Kent steal my sentence?).
Fortunately, they’re getting a helping hand from the schedule makers who somehow knew how to time everything juuuust right.
With a game at UCLA on one end of a bye and a trip to Washington at the other, it’s not like they’re facing a firing squad. Other than two players lost for the season, one could imagine an entirely healthy squad when they go to Seattle. Of course, that assumes we’re getting honest assessments of health, an assumption with the foundational support of quick sand.
I know as Duck fans we’re conditioned to expect the other giant shoe to drop, but it hasn’t happened yet. We can leave the worrying for another day.
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Indeed. In fact, I think you borrowed a comment I made just the other day about having the second fewest injuries in the conference.
Who has the most injuries this year? USC. They had 12 on that list, which is 3 times as much as we did. And yes, we aren’t USC and will never have their depth, but if we want to take the next step as a program, developing depth that can compete through injuries is critical. In fact, its not even critical, its probably the number one thing we need.
If we have to simply wish for a relatively injury free season to have a shot as a championship, we might as well give up now, because that just doesn’t happy to any team very often.
If we end up winning the Pac-10 this year and reaching the Rose Bowl, none of us are going to claim that we “backed into it”, or downgrade the accomplishment. We’ll simply look past the fact that USC lost a game to Washington with their starting QB out with injury, and that one of their top running backs nearly killed himself.
Nor should we downgrade the accomplishment. Football is a violent sport and (I’ll say it again), no team is going to get through without some key injuries. Even in 2001, when we did get relatively fortunate with injuries, we lost Keith Lewis for a game and promptly lost to Stanford, as we got beat repeatedly deep and over the middle (right where Keith Lewis would have been).
Teams are not unlucky to have to deal with injuries. They are lucky when they don’t have to. And the teams that overcome those, don’t do so because of luck. They do so because they’ve recruited, developed and prepared their players properly.
I think Chip Kelly is on the right track in improving us in this aspect, with his harder practices with 1st team playing each other. We practice harder and more intense, better simulating game experience up and down the roster.
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Yep. Depth is everything in football. I’m learning to accept that after years of ifs and buts.
And regarding the second fewest injuries thing, I got that from reading Ted Miller’s injury report which I linked to.
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I know. I was just ribbing you about that, because I made the same comment the other day.
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the point is we will survive to play another day and win doing so
GO!!!!!! DUCKS!!!!!!
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