Rico out for the season

[Bornthrilla]

www.news-record.com/sports/local/ncatfb_091504.htm

Aggies' best arm suffers broken foot

9-15-04

By Bill Hass, Staff Writer
News & Record



GREENSBORO -- When preseason camp opened, N.C. A&T's football team had three experienced quarterbacks.

Now the Aggies are down to one.

Tuesday, A&T head coach George Small said Rico Watkins suffered a broken foot during Saturday night's 16-13 loss at Alcorn State and will require surgery. Watkins is out for the season, but he still has one year of eligibility left.

"I remember the play very well," Small said. "He was pressured out of the pocket and tried to run, and when he was tackled, his foot was broken. We didn't know it then, and to show you how courageous he is, he came back on the field in the fourth quarter and hopped around, trying to help his team."

The loss of Watkins is a serious blow as the Aggies head into Saturday's game at Wake Forest.

Although Marshall Glenn was named the starter after preseason competition, Watkins played in A&T's first two games. At 6-foot-6, he has the best arm among the quarterbacks and throws the best deep ball. Last year, he passed for 1,061 yards and seven touchdowns.

Glenn, who won the starting job because he runs the offense well, will likely take most of the snaps now. Randal Rankins, the third experienced quarterback, was declared academically ineligible before the season.

Glenn is a better runner than Watkins, but remains a hot-and-cold passer. He completed 44.3 percent of his throws for 786 yards and one touchdown last season. This season, he is 15-of-30 with one TD and one interception.

"He gives us leadership," Small said, "but he has to become a more consistent and more accurate passer. He missed someone wide open that would have been a touchdown against Alcorn. When he's on, he's on."

Moving into the backup role is fifth-year player Adrian Moye, who threw one incomplete pass and ran twice for 13 yards against Alcorn.

Small said Moye and Ivan Larrymore, a transfer from Virginia Tech, will have their learning curves accelerated to be ready to play.

[TOPPDOGG]

We will have to go back to 3 yards and a cloud of dust with a pass play mixed in every now and then. We do have a bevy of capable running backs.

All may not be lost.

[Aggie One]

It's another serious blow but not necessarily fatal. More in this week's column later tonight.

[captaggie]

Looking forward to this column.

[Aggie One]

It appears the Deacs are beat up too, even more so.

Grobe says Deacons are wary of Aggies
Wake Forest, battling injuries, to play its home opener against Division I-AA N.C. A&T


By Dan Collins
JOURNAL REPORTER


There may be a few college-football teams around that can play at 75-percent efficiency and still win.

But Wake Forest, as Coach Jim Grobe well knows, is not one of them.

"We don't have enough talent to take anybody for granted," Grobe said.

So Grobe's task at hand this week is to get enough effort from his bruised and battered team to avoid a stumble in Saturday's home opener against N.C. A&T of NCAA Division I-AA's MEAC.

"I've told our players, there are no easy games on our schedule," Grobe said. "They're just not there. And of course you know the five North Carolina teams we're playing are all going to play like their hair's on fire.

"We got that from East Carolina, and we're going to get it from A&T."

The Deacons are 1-1, having lost at Clemson in double overtime and won at East Carolina. N.C. A&T is 1-1, having beaten N.C. Central 16-15 on a last-second 50-yard field goal and dropped a tough 16-13 decision to Alcorn State.

Wake Forest thus has little to win Saturday, and much to lose. The Deacons found themselves in this discomforting position when Grobe and Athletics Director Ron Wellman agreed to accommodate Air Force and postpone a scheduled game with the Falcons until a future season.

Perhaps even more discomforting for Grobe is the Deacons' injury report, which by yesterday listed both receiver Jason Anderson and fullback Damon McWhite as out of the game against N.C. A&T. Both were injured against East Carolina - Anderson sustaining a sprained ankle and McWhite a sprained knee.

"We're a beat-up football team, and that's not good," Grobe said. "We're not going to have Jason this week.

"I don't know when we'll get him back. He's got a pretty swollen ankle.

"Then Damon McWhite had an MRI (Monday) night, and they haven't read the results of it yet. He's got a pretty loose knee, so we're really worried about his knee. He may have to have surgery to repair that knee."

Trainer Don Steelman said that regardless of the MRI report, McWhite is expected to miss at least four to six weeks.

As bad as it hurts to lose Anderson, the team's star senior receiver, the loss of McWhite may hinder the Deacons' offense even more. With Anderson sidelined after the second play against East Carolina, seven other Deacons caught a total of 15 passes for 312 yards.

But McWhite played the best football of his career in the first two games, carrying four times for 21 yards and providing the kind of lead blocking that the Deacons haven't had since Ovie Mughelli graduated after the 2002 season.

"He was a real bright spot for us," Grobe said. "I thought we had replaced Ovie for awhile. And Damon catches the ball a little better than Ovie out of the backfield."

Grobe said that last week his coaching staff was considering moving Dan Callahan, a 6-4, 260-pound sophomore, from tight end to tackle to compensate for the loss of freshman guard Brodie Overstreet to an eye condition. But by yesterday, Callahan was listed at fullback and was running first team ahead of Chris Owen, a converted linebacker.

"Really we feel OK," Grobe said. "We've got Dan Callahan, who we played in the spring at fullback quite a bit. Once Damon was playing so well we gave most of the reps to Dan at tight end. So we'll bump him back, and I think he'll do a good job.

"And I think Chris Owen, if we can get him not to hyperventilate once he gets out on the field, will do fine. He went out the other night and he was like a mad dog in a meathouse. He was just running around trying to hit anything that moved. We were trying to get him to hit the right targets, but you're talking about a guy who has been on defense his whole career."

Guard Arby Jones, sidelined the first two games with a strained shoulder muscle, returned to practice yesterday and is expected to play Saturday. But defensive end Bryan Andrews didn't practice yesterday, and is expected to miss his second straight game because of a bruised shin and sprained ankle.

Running back Micah Andrews and wide receiver Travo Woods have been reinstated after being suspended the first two games for breaking unspecified team rules.

Grobe said he will be watching the play of Andrews closely, to see if he can afford to redshirt running back D'Angelo Bryant this season. Bryant played last season in his first season at Wake Forest, but has been slowed this season by tendinitis in his knee.

"I just don't want to see (Bryant) go through another year where he plays a few snaps this week, then misses a couple of games," Grobe said. "We're going to try to keep him on the shelf if we can. I don't know if we'll be able to.

"This is just wishing and hoping, but I would like to be in a situation where when we lose Chris Barclay and Cornelius Birgs next year, then for two years we've got D'Angelo Bryant and Micah Andrews. That would give us a pretty good punch.

"We're going to try to bring in a couple of tailbacks in this recruiting class."

• Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at [e-mail]

[Gator]

This will be our first true test to see what kind of coach Small is and what kind of player do we have.