A View From The Upper Deck
Mark Willard
Teamkong

After a little prodding from the proprietor of TeamKong, I agreed to do a column for this site.  Now comes the hard part:  What should I write about? 

I decided to take a little different tack on the journey.  To those that know me, this isn't a surprise, I usually see things from a slightly different viewpoint anyway. I'm going to discuss some of the things you may not have noticed, or maybe didn't realize that you did.  I'll try and steer away from the same old stuff already covered ad nauseum by the media.

The Gorillas amassed over 480 yards of offense against Lincoln, a fact that tells us that we have a good deal of talent on offense.  However, what doesn't show up in the box score is the outstanding job of blocking done by our receivers and backs. 

On any given play, one of these "skill position" players will be the one to (hopefully) advance the ball for PSU.  As talented as this player may be, his success or failure depends in large part to what the other "skill position" players do without the ball.  Saturday night against Lincoln, a couple of players stood out from my perspective. 

The first of these was RB Matt Strange.  No one is going to confuse Matt with Jermaine Carpenter or Noah Hoppe; he's not the fastest guy on the planet.  You probably won't see his name appear on the list of 1000 yard runners at PSU anytime soon.  What he does is block, and he does it well.  Time and again Saturday night, I found myself commenting to those around me about a block Strange had made, probably to the point of annoyance. 

For me, the key isn't just that he makes the blocks, he makes the RIGHT blocks.  It's easy for a player to just go out and hit the first guy he sees, it's much more important to know when to run around that guy, and find the  block that does more to advance the ball.  Matt seems to have a knack for knowing when to pass by a defensive player that isn't really in position to make a play on the ball carrier, and when to go ahead and hit the guy. 

The other blocker that stood out for me was TE Ryan Hellwig.  At 6-5, 265, Ryan's a hard guy not to notice.  I'm sure most people at the Lincoln game could tell you about the touchdown pass he caught, but what I found more gratifying was his blocking in short yardage situations.  Everyone got all excited about Aaron McConnell leading the way for Joe Taylor on his TD runs, it's nice to see the big fella in there on offense.  But closer examination would show that A-Mac had a pretty clear path to the end zone, a path already paved by Ryan Hellwig.  Of course this didn't stop our Mr. McConnell from finding someone to hit anyway.  It's always nice to have options like that.

Topic number 2 this week is Leadership, and the player I want to focus on is Aaron Bell.  Aaron is not a team captain for the Gorillas this year, but he is definitely a leader on this team.  While a lot of the focus amongst the receiving corps is rightfully on guys like Jermaine Carpenter and Eric Clawson, Bell deserves a look as well. 

A couple of incidents I witnessed this year really left an impression on me.  The first occurred early in the fall practice sessions.  During a one on one session between the WR's and the D-backs, the DBs were getting mercilessly abused by the offensive guys.  After the drill was over, I saw Aaron going up to each of the DBs, and having a word with them, slapping them on the helmet, trying to pump them up.  He realized that these guys are his teammates, not just somebody he practices against. 

The second incident happened during the game Saturday night.  I'm sure most of us are painfully aware of the difficulties experience by freshman kicker Nathan Alleman.  The kid was certainly having a rough time of it, and when he finally got off a touchback on a kickoff, the first guy off the sidelines to congratulate him was Aaron Bell.  Players remember things like that, and they appreciate it. 

QB Neal Philpot showed it too this week.  It's hard as the starter to have another QB go in and take "your" time, especially if he has some success.  After Andy led the team down for a score at the end of the first half, the first guy out to high-five him was Neal Philpot.  I think that shows a great deal of maturity and leadership, qualities we are going to need from Neal this year.

The final feature on our journey, is a weekly award I like to call the Unsung Hero Award.  It will be given weekly to a player that may or may not show up on the stat sheet, but made an impression nonetheless. 

This weeks winner is Ike Eguae.  It's unusual enough to have a 250 pound DE on special teams.  It's even more unusual for that player to be your "wedge buster", but that's exactly what Ike was doing this week on several kickoffs.  Unfortunately, it was one of the "wedge busting" plays on which Ike was injured Saturday.  Hopefully, it's not serious, and we can look forward to more sights of this monster screaming down the field towards unsuspecting enemy blockers.