Monday Musings – Pack loses 4th starter to injury

'11 Football24

August 22, 2011

NC STATE FOOTBALL

COUNTDOWN: 12 days

JP Giglio (N&O)
Wolfpack loses 4th starter to injury

Injury issues are piling up for N.C. State’s football team.

Standout defensive tackle J.R. Sweezy will miss at least the first five games after undergoing surgery for a foot fracture on Sunday, according to the school. He will be out six weeks, according to the school release, which spans until Oct. 2, or the first five games of the season.

Sweezy, a senior captain, is the fourth starter the Wolfpack has lost to injury in the run-up to the Sept. 3 opener against Liberty.

Caulton Tudor (N&O)
ACC quarterbacks untested

It’s been years since the ACC has gone through a season of quarterback chaos, but the components are in place for that sort of disorder in 2011.

It starts with an approaching wave of inexperienced starters.
Four of the league’s top five top-rated quarterbacks from 2010 have exited.

Three – Tyrod Taylor (Virginia Tech to the Baltimore Ravens), T.J. Yates (UNC to Houston Texans) and Christian Ponder (Florida State to Minnesota Vikings) – are in NFL preseason camps.

The fourth, Russell Wilson (N.C. State), left the Wolfpack after a second summer of minor league baseball to play for Wisconsin.

Those departures, alone, qualify as a journey into the unknown.

THE WILSON WATCH

Ken Tysiac (N&O)
New shade of red, same Wilson

At first, a lot of things seemed different about Russell Wilson as he stood Thursday on the artificial turf at Camp Randall Stadium.

The former N.C. State quarterback is at a new school at Wisconsin. Eager Badger fans are hoping he will be the final, key player as a senior on a team expected to contend for the Big Ten title while N.C. State fans sweat out the development of junior Mike Glennon after Wilson’s controversial departure.

At Wisconsin, Wilson is preparing to play in a new conference with new teammates in a climate where a high temperature of 81 degrees Thursday was causing complaints about the heat.

“Some of these guys are like, ‘Man, it’s hot out here.’ ” Wilson said, smiling. “I’m like, ‘Man, it’s 100 back in Virginia and North Carolina, and 100 percent humidity on top of it.’ “

JEFF POTRYKUS – MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
New Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson keeps the faith

To firmly grasp and fully appreciate the unbreakable bond between Russell Wilson and his father, Harrison Wilson III, and how faith in God fortified the family during trying times, you need to peek inside a Virginia hospital room in 2007.

Harrison Wilson III, whose body had been ravaged by diabetes, was in a coma after suffering one of several strokes that would eventually strike. Doctors said he would not live.

His wife, Tammy Wilson, and Russell Wilson, were visiting and weren’t ready to surrender.

Let Russell Wilson, who appears to be a lock to open the 2011 college football season as Wisconsin’s starting quarterback, tell the story:
“My mom came in and started singing a song to him, ‘All By Grace,'” the Richmond, Va., native explained after a recent practice. “The doctors walked out of the room, and he lifted up his right hand. He hadn’t moved for a week and a half. My mom freaked out and the doctors came back in.”

The U-niverse

AP
Jacory Harris’ Senior Miami Season In Limbo Now

Jacory Harris came into this season believing Miami coaches would struggle deciding if he or Stephen Morris should be the Hurricanes’ starting quarterback.

Well, he was right.

Filling out the season’s first depth chart is going to be an arduously difficult process for Miami. The accusation that Harris is one of 12 current Hurricanes who allegedly broke NCAA rules by accepting gifts from rogue booster Nevin Shapiro is overshadowing just about everything that happened on the field during training camp.

If Miami uses any player later deemed ineligible by the NCAA – which has been investigating for months – then the Hurricanes run the risk of having to retroactively forfeit games. If the Hurricanes sit those 12 players, most of whom are presumptive starters and in many cases expected to be NFL draft picks next year, then their chances of winning in 2011 plummet quickly.

AP
At Miami, There’s 1 Big Question: ‘How?’

A sports bar is packed with Hurricanes boosters, most of whom are wearing their team’s orange and green colors. They spontaneously break into chanting their unofficial anthem, “It’s great … to be … a Mi-a-mi Hurr-i-cane!”

As they sing, the sight of Nevin Shapiro running into an Orange Bowl end zone and getting chased off by a security guard pops onto nearby televisions.

Groans rise from the crowd.

About 1.21 Jigawatts

Class of '98, Mechanical Engineer, State fan since arriving on campus and it's been a painful ride ever since. I live by the Law of NC State Fandom, "For every Elation there is an equal and opposite Frustration."

'11 Football

24 Responses to Monday Musings – Pack loses 4th starter to injury

  1. tuckerdorm1983 08/22/2011 at 8:53 AM #

    At every university that I have ever taught at there are always easy professors and hard professors. It used to be that evaluations of professors were not put on the internet.

    Anyway, I taught at UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1990s. One semester I had two football players. One came to class sometimes, the other not very often. Their work was rather poor. Most professors would have given them a F or at least a D. Well, I am one of those easy professors that almost never gives F or D. I was a soft touch when it came to grades no matter what.

    Long story short, I gave them both C grades. Right or wrong, they did minimal effort, but showed some effort at the end. Anyway the one that never came to class much, went on the have a very long career in the NFL.

    That next semester I had 3 football players in my class. They got passing grades and one actually put in a solid effort. That is showing up to class, passing the tests and writing decent papers.

    My point is that this professor may be the easy professor. Lots of professor see the football players coming to the University as slaves. They play for the school, bring in tons of money and then live like paupers. I could see a professor giving out good grades as kind of a “social makeup call”. Affirmative action is rampant in academia because of that exact same mentality.

    Perhaps I should have been a harder grader and flunked those two yahoos. As for affirmative action, I oppose it 100 percent.

  2. VaWolf82 08/22/2011 at 9:38 AM #

    I wish that Tudor’s article had focused on the subject suggested by the title, rather than spending most of the time saying injuries to starting QB’s are bad (master of the obvious).

    I expected the article to focus more on the new QBs starting all over the ACC. He said that 4 of the top 5 QBs from last season left. ISTR an earlier article said that 6 ACC teams would be starting new QB’s. To me this means that pre-season projections are worth even less than usual (which is hard to do).

    How the new QBs do will be one of the main themes of this season. Flashing back to 2004, ineffective QB(s) can quickly derail a season.

  3. TOBtime 08/22/2011 at 9:46 AM #

    At least the “slaves” were getting something for being paupers. During my time at NC State I paid to be there (even after a tuition scholarship) and still lived like a pauper. Needless to say I didn’t bring in millions for a display of my athletic prowess. For most of us the university was/is banking on our millions coming in over the remainder of our lifetimes.

    BobLeeSwagger addresses the affirmative action aspect quite well in his latest column.

  4. Ashman87 08/22/2011 at 10:02 AM #

    I have a bad feeling that the injury bug is going to get a lot worse.

  5. packhammer 08/22/2011 at 10:49 AM #

    ^^^Hush your mouth! We will be fine.

  6. packhammer 08/22/2011 at 11:02 AM #

    Good Lord, BobLee is on fire: “If a chancellor cannot recognize The Kunta Kinte Flim Flam what can he recognize?” Thanks TOBtime.

  7. Packfan28 08/22/2011 at 12:20 PM #

    The good news is most of the injuries aren’t season ending, and have the biggest impact on the easiest part of the schedule. The bad news is, even when the injured guys come back it will take them a few weeks or more to get back into game shape. It will be interesting to see if one of the other guys step up and takes advantage of the opportunity.

    As a little side bar, “Saturday Somethings” gets 7 comments, “Monday Musings” gets 6, and sandwiched in between these is a Marvin Austin transcript story which gets 52. I hope I live to see the day when, two weeks before opening kick-off, our football team warrants more interest than some schmuck tarhole.

  8. old13 08/22/2011 at 1:00 PM #

    “I hope I live to see the day when, two weeks before opening kick-off, our football team warrants more interest than some schmuck tarhole.”

    I agree. All the “extra curriculars” going on in CFB, especially over at Cheater Hill, sure have detracted from the start of the season in Raleigh. Unfortunately, it appears, with all the wide-spread problems, and the NCAA trying to (over?)react to it all, the distractions could carry into the 2012 season or further. BUT it is about (past) time that these problems were addressed realistically and effectively before the whole of college football is destroyed IMO!

  9. packplantpath 08/22/2011 at 1:13 PM #

    ““I hope I live to see the day when, two weeks before opening kick-off, our football team warrants more interest than some schmuck tarhole.””

    I disagree heartily. Remember the first rule of news. Scandals sell. Blogging is the same. In college football, boring preseasons are good.

  10. Prowling Woofie 08/22/2011 at 1:26 PM #

    Packfan28,

    Closed practices and scrimmages, with few details released except injury reports, yield little to discuss, unfortunately.

    Once the games begin and we can see the product on the field, I’m sure traffic will increase !

    I’m with you, though – only one season-ending injury thus far (he said, knocking on wood).

    As long as these guys are back in the line-up to knock the crap out of the Heels, I’m good…

  11. HPWolf 08/22/2011 at 1:42 PM #

    Its a good thing TOB has built the depth chart up so that we are not relying on true freshmen and walkons. We should be fine since we’ll be getting our starters back before the meat of the schedule kicks in.

  12. JEOH2 08/22/2011 at 5:32 PM #

    I appreciate the optimism here…but this injury hurts my soul much more than any other…

    Young Sweezy is our best DL, and even if he were back by GT, there’d be a rust factor in a game we absolutely need against an offense that we absolutely need him against…

    Lets also not discount the Wake game (first road test, CRUCIAL ACC game)…and Cincy (Nat’l Televised night game on the road)…

    “We should be fine” is not something I think of whenever I hear about an injury at NC State especially Young Sweezy…

  13. runwiththepack 08/22/2011 at 8:21 PM #

    Let’s just hope we can get through Sept/early Oct. without these guys and without a “L”, before the meat of the schedule comes up. But most of the players are upper-classmen (finally!), and you could say coach O’B and staff are an “upper-classmen”, too, in a sense. I suspect they are ALL chompin’ at the bit! (or is it just me?) It has been building up to this for years now.

    And I don’t care if the N&O has a lot of chatter about us, especially if we flop later. We can make our own chatter amongst ourselves.

    Same thing with preseason polls – unless you realistically think you might be a NC contender. In fact, it seems they just jinx us more often than not. If and when our team is as good as we want them to be, there will be no more “sneaking up” on anybody”.

  14. runwiththepack 08/22/2011 at 8:25 PM #

    We don’t know… it could be a blessing in disguise as far as the injured go. We could get through Sept. without a loss, and have fresh, quality players rejoin the lineup. We don’t know if they might have gotten injured in Sept. and lost for when we really need them, (we like to think), in Oct/Nov.

  15. ancsu87 08/22/2011 at 8:29 PM #

    Packfan28 I think they missed your point. I would love to see the day when the Jimmie V golf tournament gets more interest from NCSU fans than UNC “what are they doing or not doing” comments.

  16. Old MacDonald 08/22/2011 at 8:53 PM #

    You people who want less UNC scandal coverage: question. Do you think maybe the scandal has evened up some of the inherent disadvantages State football has in regard to UNC? Do you see the State/UNC football inter-realtionship as a zero sum game? You really think what happens over there does not impact us?

    We busted our asses to get the information out there for reasons other than schadenfreude.

  17. Packfan28 08/22/2011 at 9:03 PM #

    “You people” What people, a Wolfpack fan? Yep, guilty as charged.

    Hoping that our athletic programs generate more interest than what is going on down I40 has turned me into “you people”? Give me a break.

    By the way, who said anything about less coverage? I believe my comment was about lack of comments about our own team.

  18. Old MacDonald 08/22/2011 at 9:27 PM #

    Not surprisingly, you totally missed my point.

  19. HPWolf 08/22/2011 at 10:09 PM #

    JEOH2
    I say “we should be fine” because I have to look at all the positives in the situation. To be sure first of all I absolutely hate the injury to Sweezy. He’s a fine young man and I really want to see him have a great year and get drafted to the NFL. The positives are numerous. The injury is not season ending or career ending. The schedule is light in the first half of the season. We have 18 of 22 projected starters good to go. We have three of the four projected to return by game 5. There are 81 other scholarship players ready to take the field. Our two freshmen kickers are looking pretty good so far. The back ups on the d line are young but capable.
    Our team needs Mustafa, Duran and JR as soon as we can get them back but we may be a stronger team by the time they return due to the back ups gaining valuable minutes. Let’s not start the gloom and doom, woe as me, were NC State sad song.
    This is still our year. Just wait and see.

  20. hoop 08/22/2011 at 10:11 PM #

    FYI, regardless of schadenfreude or truly honorable intentions, I’m all for ripping UNX down to where they deserve to be, which is average at best.

  21. Packfan28 08/22/2011 at 10:23 PM #

    I agree with HPWolf. There are a number of positives we can draw upon such as the ease of schedule in the 1st part of the year, we have more depth than in the past, this isn’t a season ending injury, and it will be kind of neat to see what the fill-ins can do.

    Despite the injuries I’m still bullish on these guys, and I honestly think we will have an even better season this year than last.

  22. runwiththepack 08/23/2011 at 12:42 PM #

    HPWolf, that’s sorta what i was sayin’, too. Make lemonaid. We ARE lucky most of those aren’t SEASON-ENDING (dreaded words) injuries. Whew!

    Why do our injuries seem to predominate in not only our starters, but the best of them? Last year was a well-deserved break from injuries – and “L”s, NOT co-incidentally. So far, this year is within the avg. range, injury-wise if, indeed, those players return early Oct. God, I hope we don’t have any more injuries in our two-deep.

    And,
    hoop, +1! I wouldn’t be so charged up to see Clemson or VT brought down, because they have never been anywhere close to the arrogant bastards that populate so much of Chapel Hill. So much of what good has happened for CH has been at OUR expense. All the crowing they do is usually while suggesting that they are superior to us.

  23. runwiththepack 08/23/2011 at 12:46 PM #

    Oh! And I can’t believe that the curtain is finally being pulled back in Chapel Hill. Didn’t look as though i would live long enough to see the day. I just hope the “curtain” is held open long enough for the whole country to see what the self-proclaimed “public ivy” is really all about.
    Look under the rug, too, while you’re at it. Check out the attic.

  24. ancsu87 08/28/2011 at 12:18 AM #

    Old McDonald no one said they wanted less coverage of UNC scandal. The comment was that we wanted to see more energy focused on our own team than on the schadenfreude (since you wanted to act like a big boy) of UNC.

    I don’t see that we ever had any disadvantage with UNC football. We have always be on par with them in football and even ahead of them especially considering the media always reports that signed 4-5 star players versus our 2-3 star players. Do you really believe under Butch Davis they had an advantage over us or under John Bunting or ……

Leave a Reply