PATCHWORK PLAY.

Byline: Bob Clark The Register-Guard

EL PASO, Texas - It was as if no Oregon football player was immune from serious injury at any time, any place.

Keith Allen, a junior wide receiver, was running on the grass practice field in an August workout when his anterior cruciate ligament splintered.

`We looked at the tape to see how it happened,' said Kevin Steil, Oregon's head trainer.

There was no contact. No unusual move. The Ducks weren't even in full pads.

`You couldn't blame it on the turf or the cleats,' Steil said. `Just bad luck.'

There was nothing but, it seemed, in Oregon's season of misfortune with injuries.

Haloti Ngata, the sophomore defensive tackle, tore a knee ligament in the first quarter of the first game when he was blocked in the midsection. No blocker diving at a leg, simply a foot that landed awkwardly, and something in that massive leg had to give. It was an anterior cruciate ligament.

Josh Rogers, the senior tight end, had a biceps muscle torn loose from the arm bone when he was tied up with a defensive lineman. How many times had he done that drill? What were the odds?

Nate LiaBraaten, another tight end, suffered a broken bone and torn ligaments when a teammate fell on him from behind. How often do players fall on each other, in any practice? For the Ducks this season, it was as if any routine movement might result in a call for the trainer.

Too often, the players knew immediately there was a problem.

Scott Vossmeyer, a junior linebacker, `thought something was really wrong' when he suffered his knee injury in a practice, after being blocked by a UO running back.

`They said do you want the cart (for a ride) or try to stand up?' Vossmeyer recalled. `I was, `Oh, I can stand up.' I tried ... I just fell to the ground.'

The diagnosis: torn medial collateral ligament, though it didn't require surgery and he returned to practice six weeks later, and could play in the Sun Bowl on Wednesday when the Ducks meet 24th-ranked Minnesota.

But there also can be a delayed analysis of an injury, even a serious one. Jordan Carey, a freshman wide receiver, made a leaping catch and landed awkwardly to tear a knee ligament, though he continued with the November workout, apparently no worse for the tear.

`I didn't even go get it checked after practice,' Carey said. `There was pain, but I could still run.

`The next morning when I tried to get out of bed, I couldn't even bend my leg.'

Carey ended up better off than many of his teammates, who were ruled out for the season by their injuries. Carey suffered only - odd word, that, for a serious knee injury, but in the Oregon context it fits - a partial tear of the posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. He didn't need surgery, and tried to return to play in the bowl though it appears he won't play Wednesday.

`I look at all the guys who weren't as fortunate as me and had to have surgery,' Carey said. `They've had to go through that whole process and rehab, a whole bunch of stuff I didn't want to go through.'

It was a year of that for the Oregon football team and its medical staff.

`It was crazy,' said Bob Crist, the UO team doctor. `In my 10 years here, I've never experienced anything like this.'

It wasn't so much the total volume as the severity of the volume.

`We always have ankle sprains,' Steil said. `We don't have four torn ACLs in one season, a torn biceps, a dislocated shoulder ...'

Plus three players who had to end their careers due to repeated concussions. Two others who underwent shoulder operations, and another who put his surgery off until after the bowl game, though Marcus Maxwell has now been ruled out as a possible participant.

Heck, one Duck missed time with osteitis pubis, an inflammation of tissue in the lower abdomen. What other football team in America knows the impact of osteitis pubis?

In helping confirm information for the graphic that accompanies this story, Steil had to rely on a computer record to make sure no significant injuries were overlooked, and the criteria for that was missed games or surgery required.

`I think that's it,' Steil said after a review of it all.

There were 20 missed games by tight ends, and at least that many by offensive linemen. The Ducks didn't get a full game out of Ngata, maybe their best defensive lineman, and not even a snap out of Joey Forster, their best offensive lineman. Robert Hamilton missed his second season with a second torn ACL ... on the other knee.

Mike Bellotti, the Oregon coach, sometimes wondered when it would end. It started early.

In practices before the first game, three Ducks suffered knee injuries that put them out for the season. Also gone before that opener was Rogers, his biceps torn loose when he and defensive lineman Igor Olshansky - that's two of the strongest Ducks - were locked up in what amounted to arm wrestling.

`You don't see anything unusual,' Bellotti recalled of that injury. `Then Josh grabs his arm and walks away.'

His career was over, before his senior season began. It was the same for Forster, a three-year starter done when the ACL on his right knee was torn in an August practice.

Two seniors, gone before their final season even starts.

`With younger kids, you can talk about rehabbing and coming back,' Bellotti said. `With a fifth-year senior, what can I say? It's so frustrating for everybody. ... You really feel powerless in that situation.'

Not that it's a lot easier with a freshman in his first fall going down for the year. Ramond White, a linebacker, arrived with a shoulder that should have had surgery when he was in high school, so he, the team and the doctors decided there was no sense in putting it off any longer. It meant White couldn't even practice with the Ducks. Not easy for a freshman; before his first college class, he was on the operating table.

`It precludes those kids from bonding with their teammates,' Bellotti said. `You have to guard against them losing focus' on academics as well as their football.

`They've been recruited to play football,' Bellotti added. `When you take that away from them, they feel like a guy who's been ostracized.'

Or consider the players ruled out even though they don't require surgery, or any obvious treatment. No cast. No scar. Just a headache.

Three Ducks, two juniors and a senior, followed recommendations that they give up football after their latest concussions, and a freshman was advised to end his season early.

`It's not like a broken leg or a knee injury. We don't know how to repair the brain,' Bellotti said. `You have to tell them in no uncertain terms that (a concussion) is not something to mess around with.

`It's like I told one young man, `If you were my son, I wouldn't let you play.' '

Crist said modern medicine allows for better testing on the effects of a concussion, but the general guideline is that each successive bruising of the brain - which a concussion essentially is - is more serious. He warns players before the first practice to be sure and tell the medical staff if they think they've suffered a concussion, so they can be examined and held out until they've recovered.

Sophisticated testing allows for measurements of brain activity, and the Ducks have a comparison by doing the testing on each player prior to each season. Better monitoring, however, doesn't explain the loss of three players to concussions this season, Crist said. It's a fluke, a statistical anomaly.

Maybe that's how to explain the spate of significant injuries suffered by the Ducks this season, though so many involving soft tissue such as ligaments or cartilage might follow a trend, Crist suggested.

`There's not any question that as kids have gotten faster and stronger and heavier, we're seeing more injuries,' Crist said. `They're putting more strain on their bodies. When a 300-pounder and a 250-pounder meet, something has to give.'

Often, it's an ACL or PCL or MCL in the knee, or a ligament or tendon that holds the shoulder bones in place or keeps muscles attached to bones.

`You can make your muscles stronger,' Crist said. `You can't strengthen ligaments. You've got what you've got.'

And often one gives. Just why so many, in one season?

`I think we've been lucky the past few years with injuries,' Vossmeyer said. `It caught up with us this year.'

DT HALOTI NGATA: torn ACL, out after first quarter of first game

LB Robert Hamilton: torn ACL, missed entire season

WR Keith Allen: torn ACL, missed entire season

WR Jordan Carey: torn PCL, missed last month, doubtful for bowl

LB ANTHONY TRUCKS: shoulder surgery, in and out of lineup until missing final month

LB Ramond White: pre-existing condition, surgery, missed freshman season

WR Marcus Maxwell: dislocated shoulder Oct. 25, didn't play in subsequent five games

LB SCOTT VOSSMEYER: torn MCL, missed six weeks, back for bowl

OG Joey Forster: torn ACL, missed entire senior season

LB Marcus Miller: torn patella tendon, missed final month, out for bowl

CB JUSTIN PHINISEE: osteitis pubis, inflammation caused him to miss two games

CB Sam Hughes: right groin tear, unable to practice entire regular season

OT Michael DeLaGrange: back spasms vs. Stanford, missed next two games after that; also separated right shoulder and missed Arizona game.

LB A.J. TUITELE: broken ring finger, surgery limited participation early in redshirt year

TE Josh Rogers: torn biceps muscle, missed entire senior season