For the football team, season-ending injuries are becoming about as common as touchdowns. The Pack now has 11 players officially out for the season including starters freshman cornerback Rashard Smith, redshirt junior linebacker Nate Irving and redshirt freshman guard R.J. Mattes. The team has also had many key players miss individual games due to injuries, including junior wide receiver Owen Spencer, redshirt junior cornerback DeAndre Morgan and redshirt senior halfback Jamelle Eugene.
Even with all of the injuries the team has sustained this year, coach Tom O’Brien believes that his team has accepted the fact injuries happen and has to move on and not focus on things it has no control over.
“The kids are fine; I think they are excited about coming back home and playing a football game. And I think that is who you worry about the most,” O’Brien said. “They have accepted the fact that they have been dealt a bad hand and there is nothing that they can do but fight their way out of it so we are going to continue to fight and do the best that we can.”
Injuries are not a new thing to the football team. Last year the Pack was hit with the injury bug throughout the year, with 13 starters missing a combined 75 games. Key players such as redshirt sophomore quarterback Russell Wilson, Irving, redshirt senior defensive tackle Alan-Michael Cash and redshirt senior halfback Toney Baker all missed significant time due to injuries.
But O’Brien says the injuries suffered last year don’t even compare to this year.
“You can’t work around injuries,” O’Brien said. “We thought it was bad last year, but it is three times as bad this year. It has to end sometime.”
In most aspects of football injuries are a negative thing, but a positive that can come out of them is how well a player plays when he is called upon to fill a spot for an injured teammate. This is the case for sophomore linebacker Dwayne Maddox, who had to fill in for the injured Irving at weak-side linebacker last year as a true freshman.
“I have been in this situation since high school. Someone got hurt and I had to step in,” Maddox said. “When I came here and had to step in my freshman year it wasn’t anything new to me. I knew I had to step in and it was going to be a big task because I had big shoes to fill in for Nate. He obviously was a good player, so I just had to elevate my game and step it up to another level.”
With the season-ending injury that Irving suffered before the season, Maddox had continued to play at the weak-side linebacker position.
However, with a recent injury to redshirt senior middle linebacker Ray Michel, Maddox had to make a move to the middle.
“Luckily most of the linebacker spots are similar,” Maddox said. “So a lot of it is the same thing and is not too much of a big difference.”
With the defense playing the way it is, it makes sure it does not use injuries as an excuse for its performance. The Pack players understand football is a physical game and injuries happen, and every team has to deal with them.
“I’m sure if you look at any team, they probably have the same thing going on when it comes to injuries,” senior safety Clem Johnson said. “Injuries are a part of football, so we just have to keep on moving.”
With the season going the way it is, O’Brien is hopeful the bad breaks the team has experienced over the past few months will eventually even out, and the luck will get back onto its side. And until it does, he said State has to go out and continue to fight every day.
“We all keep waiting for a break. Something good has to happen sometime. You can’t keep going south forever,” O’Brien said. “We just have to hang in there, circle the wagons and believe in each other and come out firing in all directions. There isn’t anything else to do, there is no sense in feeling sorry for ourselves.”
