Cougs lose Swogger with broken foot

PULLMAN – Washington State quarterback Josh Swogger has a broken bone in his left foot that will require surgery, ending the sophomore’s 2004 football season prematurely.

X-rays and a CT scan taken Sunday night revealed a fracture in the navicular, a bone on the inside of the foot just inside the arch.

“It’s a tough one,” head coach Bill Doba said. “(But) it’s something that has to be taken care of.”

The sophomore will have surgery Friday and his rehabilitation is expected to last from 3 to 6 months. Trainer Bill Drake said the quarterback won’t be able to put any weight on the foot for a significant part of the rehab process, so he will require crutches.

Swogger’s injury elevates backup Alex Brink to the starting spot and puts the already-thin Cougars in perilous shape at the quarterback position. The team’s original third-string quarterback, Mike Reilly, left the team the week before the opener, making true freshman Gary Rogers the emergency quarterback.

With Swogger’s injury, however, Rogers becomes the team’s primary backup. Ideally, the Cougars would like to have Rogers redshirt this season – that has been the team’s plan since the first day of fall camp – but an injury to Brink would force an end to that.

WSU is also without a third stringer – Travis Eilsara, who joined the squad after Reilly left, is the scout team quarterback and a transfer ineligible to play. Doba indicated the team will give a handful of snaps to at least one of three players who have some high school quarterbacking experience: punter Kyle Basler, kickoff specialist Graham Siderius and wide receiver Michael Bumpus, another true freshman.

“We’ll have somebody,” Doba said of his opening at third-string quarterback. “We won’t do a whole lot of snaps, that’s for sure. We really haven’t talked it over as a staff yet.”

Swogger had been a walking injury report in the weeks before the foot problem ended his season. In the Idaho game, Swogger partially tore the posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. That was followed by ankle problems that further limited his mobility. And in Saturday’s game against Stanford, Swogger strained the rotator cuff in his non-throwing shoulder and also sustained a minor concussion.

Even with that list of ailments, Doba thought as of Sunday afternoon that his 6-foot-5 passer would be able to play. But the tests taken later that day revealed the bone break, and altered Doba’s plans dramatically. Doba said Swogger will have an MRI today.

In fact, it’s possible the quarterback had suffered the foot injury well before taking the field against Stanford. The quarterback had struggled with severe pain for much of the week leading up to the Oregon game one week earlier, and was actually feeling better both before and during the game against the Cardinal.

“He was playing through the pain, but they decided they better do an X-ray,” Doba said.

The sophomore was in his first year as the Cougars starter and showed flashes of the talent that had put him in position to lead the Cougars. Swogger finishes the year with 13 touchdown passes to seven interceptions in six games, but he was hurt by stretches of inaccuracy that drove his completion percentage downward, in particular after the injuries began to add up. The Ohio native was 91 for 193 (47.2 percent) for 1,283 yards.

“We need to finish strong and get to a bowl game,” Swogger said in a statement. “It’s disappointing, but I’m going to help out in anyway I can to make sure this season is successful. That probably means being a cheerleader and a coach for the rest of the season. In January, I will be back and start my rehab and start getting ready for next year.”

Brink steps into the picture having taken snaps in two games earlier this season, playing much of the second half against both Colorado and Idaho. At the time, Doba said he had wanted to get Brink in so he wouldn’t have to play against a team like USC for his first collegiate action. While one week off – the Cougars play Oregon State this week before meeting the Trojans – Doba’s words appear prophetic.

The redshirt freshman from Eugene, Ore., completed 13 of 25 passes for 278 yards, including one touchdown and one interception in those two games. Brink is smaller than Swogger but significantly more mobile, perhaps allowing WSU to employ more rollouts or designed quarterback runs. With the injuries to Swogger before this most recent one, Brink has had some days, including one last week, where he got most of the snaps in practice.

“He’ll be just fine,” Doba said. “Last Tuesday he took almost all the reps and he shared them all through practice all fall. He’ll be excited, and he’s from Oregon so he’ll be going back home. It’ll be a good test for him.”