There's an elephant in the room. The Pankey injury has been hush hush so far. Nobody wants to discuss it because they're afraid what atrocities might be muttered.
Screw that. I'm just going to come out and say it: I gave my lady Beav a screaming high five when Keith Pankey went down. I know that sounds terrible, but many times the truth is painful. I can't be the only one. Come on, fess up.
Anyway, my questions are twofold:
1. Does celebrating injury make me/us bad people?
2. Who is to blame?
I'll try to reason out my own questions, but by all means add input.
In regard to #1, yes, celebrating injury makes you/me a jerk. But were we truly celebrating injury, or were we celebrating the defense getting faster and stronger? I think it was the latter. I mean, I don't really care if Keith Pankey is injured or healthy, so long as he's not near the field. Therefore, I was not truly celebrating the injury, just what the injury represents. That is, improved play. Must I have compassion for every player who wears the uniform? That seems equally ridiculous as saying every player should care about this blog.
Tackling question #2, if we fans do look like jerks, then the head coach is to blame for that. Injury was the only thing that was going to remove Keith Pankey from that game. I'm not going to beat myself up or feel guilty because Riley can't figure out his personnel.
Anyway, this is the one place on the internet where you can stomp the elephant. Repeat after me, "F it. We're better off without Pankey, and I was glad when he went down." The truth feels good. It's okay; it's going to be alright.
I was at the UCLA game and after the loss, when all the other Beavers walked away back to the locker room with their tales between their legs, Pankey was one of two players that came over to the Beaver crowd and thanked them for supporting.
Sorry, can’t be as cold hearted as you Angry, I have a bad knee for life from football and can’t be happy about anyone getting hurt.
Pankey was just a guy who wanted to play football, worked hard and started. All the Pankey aggression should go to the coaches for putting the guy in and not Pankey himself.
Am I saying we can’t say what we see, or what we can’t see? Nope, football talk is football talk, but happy a guy is injured how ever you color it, no can do.
I’m pissed at Riley / Banker for putting Pankey in, a guy who is over his head and now he is hurt, maybe for life, because the coaches refuse to coach.
I guess the question is this: can you be happy with the results (no Pankey) without being happy, on some level, with the means to that end?
Why or why not?
My following comment may not make sense to readers because Angry edited his post… I addressed the comment about there being a disconnect.
I think it still makes sense. I edited the post to avoid a can of worms.
Angry, like your comments / blog… really do.
But it is not a disconnect that I’m not happy at all it took an injury to do what the coaches should have done from the beginning.
Yes, happy Collins is on, but not happy it took an injury to do it…
My point again is coaches shouldn’t have had Pankey on, period. Nothing disconnected about that.
“happy Collins is on, indifferent to Pankey’s injury” would be more accurate in my case.
It’s not like I cheered because he was seriously hurt (heck, we don’t know the extent of it yet), but I definitely cheered he was out of the game for whatever reason. Like I said in the original post, it was more about celebrating what the injury represented (better play).
As far as the injury itself…it could have been an infinite number of things: common cold, a stubbed toe, he didn’t feel like playing, or an acl. Many of them not serious. Whatever removed him from the game made me happy because all I care about is the best chance at victory.
You can call me a sociopath for that, but I feel it’s rational.
I get your point. Does anyone shed a tear for the kid that’s sitting on the sideline not getting the opportunity to play? No it’s a shame if the kid is in fact better and not getting the opportunity to shine, it is what it is. Injuries create opportunities and sometimes make the team better. Should one be happy that the other player is “hurt” and in pain clearly no, but I agree w/ Angry one could be happy that he won’t be on the field hurting the team (his perspective).
Like you, I was happy that Keith Pankey left the USC game. I believe other OSU linebackers can and will do a better job than Keith.
But that’s not to say I was happy that Keith got hurt. Like BeaverBill, I played football, and I feel bad for any injury, to any player, any time.
I don’t see any inconsistency here. I can feel bad about Keith’s injury, while still feeling good that Keith is out of the game, and a better player has taken his place.
I’m happy Collins is in now… I’m just really pissed at the coaching this year because Collins should have been in from the beginning.
The rant for weeks is it is the coaches fault that things are where they are… poor recruiting, poor team management, not playing the best players because of some stupid sense that your obligated to play seniors.
We complain about Pankey and all the walk-ons but really who should we be pissed at. What I’m saying is this entry should have been titled:
“Riley’s shewd coaching gets another player hurt!”
Fat fingers – shewd should be skewed.
PS – Angry, you are a sociopath but that is what most of us like about you. :)
I agree it’s the coaches fault. It’s their fault a fan like me winds up looking like a jerk (see point #2 in the main post). I am resentful they put me in that position, which is probably why I’ve been lashing out at them more and more. I still like Riley because analysis wise he says the right things–he knows what he has to do, but what frustrates the hell out of me is that he doesn’t put the players on the field who can do it. I guess I like him still because I hold out hope he’s going to learn from his mistakes and never get stuck into playing guys like Pankey or Hekker again–he didn’t do this much in the past, so maybe he made promises he felt obligated to keep or something. Once this crappy batch of players moves on, if he still does this kind of stuff, then I’ll be calling for his head. He might be a head coach, but he’s definitely not done learning.
Some recruiting news: http://www.portlandtribune.com/sports/story.php?story_id=129040165376775300
I had no idea we were in the mix for Brandon Cooks (4-star corner). Interesting.
I thought Brandin Cooks committed to UCLA long ago. He’s a burner, and he can break a game open in all three phases. I wonder if he wants to play WR, and Weasel is telling him he’s going to be a d-back.
I’m a big fan of KT Tuumalo. The kid plays with guts.
I heard Oregon pulled their offer to McClure; don’t know if it’s 100% true or not though.
According to Scout, Justin Rogers has decommitted from Texas Tech, so maybe we can get him.
Yeah, I heard Tommy Tuberville pulled the scholarship offer to him because of grades
angry, that does not make you a sociopath. You have empathy for the kid but you know that it’s going to be better for the team as a whole. feeling both empathetic towards his injury and happy about it for the team does not have to be mutually exclusive–though i’m sure comment0rs are gonna fire away at you about this one :) anyway, screw it, i am also glad he’s out.
Yeah, I guess it’s sociopathic because my first reaction was “YES!!” with no empathy. In hindsight, it’s not like I’m happy about the injury itself, so it’s probably only semi-socipathic. Thanks, BG.
Angry,
FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT HOW DARE YOU BE HAPPY THAT A PLAYER WITH THE HEART OF PANKEY WENT DOWN !!! YOU ARE SICK, SICK!!!! I CAN’T BELIEVE…
how right you are. Seriously.
Injuries suck, but I think Riley and Banker were doing a massive disservice to the defense and Pankey by having him start. In Pankey’s defense, I think he just didn’t fit in this defensive scheme. I imagine if we ran a 3-4 defense he could play a LB that serves as a fourth rusher.
Sadly, Banker doesn’t have the sense or savvy to do that, and we fans have to hope he either sees the light or Pankey can’t possibly play to see a change.
And what actually had me more steamed was that Cameron Collins wasn’t being rewarded for his 2009 season, where I believe he was second or third in team tackles when he WASN’T starting. You don’t reward that by moving him to a new position and burying him in the depth chart. I remember Cliff Kirkpatrick, with a great deal of condescension in his answer, tell me that Collins shouldn’t be playing because we had “experience” in that position and Collins still had to learn the position.
Yet we didn’t give him enough reps to LEARN the position. Instead we gave the job to a guy that could have served the team by taking a redshirt and healing up. Hell, I would have loved him for that. It would have made me think he was smart for trying to get a fifth year of college paid for (Graduate School, anyone?) and he might have gotten good experience “coaching” his teammates. Who knows, he could have come back and proved a valuable back up to Cameron Collins (because when he provided a breather to a starter is when he was at his best). After that, maybe he could have taken yet another year in the program to be a Graduate Assistant, and possibly get an even better academic deal out of it. Or heck, he might have gone to play for the UFL, Canada, or elsewhere after a nice resume.
Instead, he was dead weight on a defunct defense- and got himself seriously hurt.
I can’t feel TOO much pity for him. And I can also feel a great deal of hatred for Banker- who, by the way, just bought himself like 10 more years as DC with that win over USC. Unless, of course, the Ducks destroy us to the tune of 70+ points.
God I hate our coaches and the way they let their players act like idiots.
You bring up a good point that I hadn’t thought of: it’s a disservice to the player himself. He’s had to put up with a lot of criticism and abuse. Best case for all involved is riding the pine.
That was the 1 negative from the USC game that Banker will be the D-Coordinator again next season. I don’t know what Riley sees in Banker, he’s a terrible DC who never even contains spread offenses he needs to be fired. Do we really need to see Banker not adjust to the spread yet again when the Beavers play the Ducks and get embarrassed?
I’m trying to think of D coordinators who have stopped the read option. Wilcox stopped the Ducks last year, but got blasted at Tennessee this year. But yeah, point taken: Banker is a dinosaur.
Cal seemed to do a pretty good job shutting it down a couple weeks ago. It’s really not as hard as it looks. It’s just that the option went out of favor, so d-coordinators forgot how to set up a defense to account for all the different options.
Kelly’s wrinkle isn’t that hard to understand when you look at it in this light. Think of everyone in a traditional option. The FB gets the read hand-off, and the pitch man and QB are spied. Kelly just takes out the FB and puts in a burner. Then he lines the pitch man in the slot. There should be two people pressing the slot at the line, and the strong side needs an overload on the TE. If the DT stays home instead of chasing the misdirection, then he should end up with the play coming his way quite a bit.
UO has a tell on passing plays, and I think Cal figured it out. They brought the house at just the right times against UO.
In the end, it was the speed game that killed Cal’s D. They were too tired to effectively play run D. But they had a great scheme. Thomas is not a good QB when he has someone in his face or gets hit more than once.
I’ll be interested to see what Mike Stoops draws up against them with two weeks of prep.
what killed cal was that their QB couldn’t hit water if he was sitting in a boat. and even then it took a shank by their kicker for oregon to not have been losing in the 4th quarter.
Beavocalypse, +1 Million, couldn’t have said it better had I written it myself.
Jack, I am glad you understand how to stop the option it appears that nearly no one else in college football understands it. I like your strategy, the strategy that I proposed last year isn’t much different. Interestingly, UW had a great scheme also. UW just didn’t have the talent, that is why the score was disproportionate. Nick Holt definitely put a scheme on film that would beat the ducks. Anyone think Ara Parseghian should come back to show the world how to stop the option again?
Yeah… I’m not saying stopping it is as easy as just implementing the right scheme… one that has been proven to work over the years and seemingly forgotten. A good option team will still tear chunks of yardage away from a good defense.
The problem with the option is two-fold. You have to run it to perfection when the defense is aligned correctly. And you set yourself up for unnecessary (and inevitable) injuries when you run it. When you sustain injuries, you lose the cohesive unit which is able to run the scheme to perfection.
Look at GaTech’s misfortune.
UO has been lucky not to have the injury bug hit them in the last couple years… at least not heavily. I have a feeling they’re in for a rude awakening once the injury bug does bite. We’ll be hearing the same ‘well, we would have won a NC if we weren’t on our fourth QB’ excuse.
If they make it to the end of the season intact, more power to them. If not, there’s no excuse. You set your team on that edge to win. If they fall off it, that’s just the way it goes.
While I too would prefer Cam Collins over Pankey I think Pankey has made some contributions.
Looks like Pankey only suffered a sprain, and we’ll likely see him again at some point. UGH.
He’ll probably be starting the Civil War and we can see him whiff on 5-10 tackles that’s just fantastic. Nobody would be somewhat happy that he got injured if Riley and Banker would realize that guy is not a starting LB period. If he was a backup who didn’t play much I bet we would feel bad for him being hurt.
It is a head scratcher that someone could come back that quickly from an achilles injury and in the coaches eyes be effective enough to start and get the vast majority of snaps. I just do not get what the coaches are seeing. Hey, did anyone read Eggers article in the Portland Tribune about Faith with the Beavers. I did not realize he was such a Riley apologist.
They’re pretty much best friends.
Thanks,makes sense. I re-read and it does mention that he has known Riley for 35 years. Some nice shots at guys like us who would like to see change in the coaching staff at some point. Nice to throw out something mystical like faith, instead of seriously discussing how the team is a complete enigma and the head coach has no clue as to why!
Friends since high school.
Would I be a bad Beaver fan for selling my Civil War tickets? Someone wants to pay me $400 a piece and they cost $250 a piece (for the entire season). I would feel like I was bailing on the team but that is a ton of money. What do you guys think? I have a feeling the crowd at the civil war is going to be about 50-50.
On the one hand, you could miss out on us beating the Ducks in the CW. You’ll miss us in the Giant Killers uni’s possibly being giant killers. If you think you can be happy watching it on TV and not being able to brag about ‘being there for that one’…
… then ask for a little more and buy yourself season tix for next year.
It is a tough decision.
That is nice margin, sell baby. I prefer games on TV anyway.
Ever since AC Green went to school… yeah. I prefer my living room.
I’d sell, but I’m about to lose my job so…
SELL! SELL!!!
Seriously, don’t feel bad. Especially if you use that money to buy season tickets next year, which I think may be more worthwhile than this shitapalooza of a season.
Don’t sell to a duck.
That is the thing I doubt Beaver fans want to pay way too much for a ticket. I have a feeling it is going to be about 50-50. The old side is solid but the new side has a lot of fair weather fans. Plus I wouldn’t be surprised if Duck fans and ticket speculators snapped up a lot of those valley view seats.
It’s going to be 50-50 because of guys like you. Home field advantage is going to be taken away so people can make a few bucks. If you can’t afford not to make a couple hundred dollars off your tickets then you shouldn’t have bought them in the first place. You make me sick. You don’t deserve to have the option to renew your tickets. You might as well go to the game and show your support for the Ucks. enjoy the money sellout Uck fan.
I haven’t sold them yet. What is sick is the Beaver fans selling their tickets for so cheap. It would be no different if the roles were reversed. Remember 2007, Duck fans were selling CW tickets less than face value. I guess I am a crummy fan for thinking about it. I can afford the tickets but it is more an issue of do I sell them and use the money to visit friends in California or go to the game?
I wondered if Darryl Jackson decommited from UCLA because of grades and now I see this.
“…It is hoped that Darryl Jackson, a 6-7, 315-pound offensive tackle from Lakewood, Calif., and Josh Williams, a 6-2, 210-pound linebacker from Los Angeles, will complete their academic requirements and be able to enroll at OSU in January. Both graduated from high school last spring….”
Yet another stud who ends up never setting foot on campus as a student?
Also, someone pointed out that Mr. Jackson was already in the directory. Assuming that that is him, does this sort of thing happen often?
According to Kerry Eggers, OSU has pulled it’s offer from North Carolina WR commit, Chris Lampkins.
Does anyone know the reasoning for this?
Was Lampkins only offered in hopes of landing his teammates Jeremy Reynolds and Kenzel Doe, and now that they’ve both decommitted, the coaches don’t want the kid? Does it mean that OSU has a shot at better WR prospects (Mike Thomas and Victor Blackwell)?
If he’s in the directory, he’s been admitted/cleared. I think what Eggers is getting at is they want to graduate early and be here in January. Darryl Jackson is highly intelligent as far as football players go.
Yes, I wrote about this on the forums. Lampkins is out, probably for the reasons you stated. It’s a good move imo.
Doesn’t pulling an offer from a kid who already committed hurt OSU’s reputation/recruiting in the future for that specific area?
Are there updates on Mike Thomas’ visit to OSU this past weekend? I really want this kid to commit based on his pedigree alone.
Also, what’s up with Rahmel Dockery? Earlier the kid seemed really high on OSU and went to a camp there. Now I havn’t heard a peep about him. He would be a very nice athlete to add. He’s got great speed.
Yes, it hurts their reputation in that area, but the NC coach bringing those kids out and having two of them bail hurts that coach/high school (getting preps to the next level) as well. Generally speaking you never want to be on either end, but the two kids forced both parties. The HS coach felt really bad about it.
yeah, screw it. lampkins should be mad at his buddies for de-committing.
In the case of anyone from Oak Ridge MA, we might be lucky not to get anyone in terms of our recruiting reputation in that area. Apparently their team is a mercenary squad who plays postgrads against regular HS teams and does not play nice. I read an article about them where they stopped the game in the first quarter because they canned the center head on during a scrimmage kick and sent the poor guy to the hospital. The opposing coach just up and left with his team.
They are not well liked in that area, and we may be better received by the majority of coaches if we sell us as co-victims/dissers of that program.
I’ve heard that the ‘ucks have scouts in that area. :-)
I am really happy that the staff didn’t feel some sense of obligation to Lampkins. That saved scholarship alone is huge for the program if we get a 4 star in his place.
Are you going to put up a Stanford thread Angry? I wins just thinking with the Holiday weekend coming up it might make sense to start early. Either way it is your call just a suggestion.
I would really like to see the Beavers try some QB spies. Some 3rd and mid-longs to take away Lucks ability to scramble for a first. It would also be good to get some coaching film so the coaches can help the players for the CW. Also Banker needs to sit down with the DE’s and LB’s and tell them if you are blitzing to never go further into the backfield than the QB. I think if we can do these two things a few fo the problems with running QB’s will go away.
Yes, at lunch time. I was asked to guest blog for gomightycard.com, so you can read some thoughts there, but I asked him questions as well and will be posting them in a few hours.
If he’s anything like his brothers, I’m all for it.
Woops, responded to the wrong thing.
Guys, what if Pankey is ready for the Civil War? This is a big fear of mine.
Then his (potentially at this point) last football game will be one that he and we never forget.
Hey, in case anyone’s interested, your man Cliff Kirkpatrick did a quick preview for me along the same lines as angry’s. Here’s the link:
http://www.gomightycard.com/2010/11/blogging-with-the-enemy-oregon-state-beavers-part-ii.html
Just saw and post from Cliff on Keo Camat. Nice hometown story, but I can’t believe that he will get the start over Cameron Collins. Didn’t Collins have over 70 Tackles last year as a starting safety? Didn’t Collins have 10 tackles this year in the Arizona State game this year when he started in place of Dwight Roberson? WTF is Banker and the LB coach thinking? I seriously don’t know why Collins stuck around this year, as he clearly seems to have found his way into several of the coaches doghouse.
Starting Camat is idiotic.
He’s better than Pankey, but not as good as Collins.