If I were Oregon head football coach Chip Kelly, I would make Jeremiah Masoli wear two, maybe even three or four knee braces all day, every day. Maybe even wrap them both in bubble wrap while he sleeps, just for precautionary reasons. Because as recent Duck football history has shown, the team’s success depends on the physical state of the quarterback’s knees.
We all remember seeing Dennis Dixon go down in one of the most heartbreaking nights in Oregon football history, as the No. 2 Ducks saw their dream season slip away at the hands of the Arizona Wildcats in 2007. Dixon’s knee injury proved to be the turning point for the Oregon season, and dashed his hopes at the Heisman Trophy.
This has been an unwelcome trend with Oregon quarterbacks during the past few years; just ask junior Nate Costa, who has been sidelined with torn knee ligaments for the past two seasons. In 2007, he would have been the guy to step in for Dixon after he went down in Tucson, but Costa had been battling knee problems since practice back in October. Many of us expected to see Costa premiere in 2008, but he was again sidelined two weeks before the season-opener against Washington. Having gone through two major surgeries in as many seasons, it’s tough to tell whether Costa will be able to make another run at the starting spot.
Junior Justin Roper suffered from knee problems last season as well, a season in which he started the first three games and looked to be the go-to guy for the 2008 campaign. But injuries and other health issues kept him from doing so as Masoli slowly took over.
The Ducks have gone from being six-deep at quarterback in 2008, to three-deep in 2009. The bizarre thing is that they haven’t lost anyone to graduation. With the recent transfers of freshman Chris Harper and Roper, as well as the departure of Robbie Pestal – I’m not sure I knew who he was to begin with – Oregon is now left with Masoli, freshman Darron Thomas and Costa. If all three can stay healthy, the team should be just fine.
This leads back to my pitch for knee braces. The season Masoli put together last year was nothing short of remarkable, but I don’t think we should always count on a fifth-string quarterback in his first season of Division I football to climb the charts and produce the way he did. It just doesn’t happen like that. He was the exception. But now that Masoli has gotten the time and reps needed to fully understand Oregon’s intricate offense, it only makes sense to me that all the necessary precautions must be taken to keep him healthy and on the field as much as possible.
I don’t know how many more seasons I can handle watching the Oregon quarterbacks go down under somewhat preventable circumstances. Granted, injuries are a part of the game and nobody wants to see a player get injured, but I hope this is the year the team won’t have to play musical chairs with the quarterbacks. It reminds me of Mary Schmich’s poem, “Wear Sunscreen.” The first line reads, “If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.” So to Jeremiah Masoli, Darron Thomas and Nate Costa: If I could offer you only one tip for the future, knee braces would be it.
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Ducks’ season takes a knee
Daily Emerald
June 4, 2009
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