O'Neill to miss several weeks with injury

Senior Doug O'Neil, the Quakers' leading returning receiver, will miss the first half of the season due to a torn PCL. A Penn football team that had expected to return the best wide receiving corps in the Ivy League suffered its third big offseason loss, as it was learned that senior wideout Doug O'Neill will likely miss the first half of the 1999 season. O'Neill, who led the Quakers with 42 catches for 506 yards last fall, tore the posterior cruciate ligament -- the lesser known cousin of the ACL and the MCL -- in his left knee and his current status is unclear. O'Neill joins Penn juniors David Rogers and David O'Neill -- his younger brother -- as key receiving threats who will not be in the starting lineup this Saturday against Dartmouth. Rogers (29 catches for 405 yards in '98) is on a Mormon mission and David O'Neill (10 catches for two touchdowns) was academically ineligible and left Penn for the year. The loss of Doug O'Neill, an All-Ivy honorable mention selection last season, will likely hurt the most. Standing on the sidelines at practice yesterday, O'Neill had little information other than the fact that his knee hurt and that he would be heading to a doctor later in the afternoon for a final diagnosis. "I hurt it against Millersville and haven't practiced since," said O'Neill, referring to the Quakers' September 4 scrimmage with the Division II school. More than a week of rest did not help the knee, however, and it now appears that it will be several more weeks before the senior can step back onto Franklin Field. "We're waiting for a doctor's report right now," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "The doctors X-rayed and MRIed it and now we're waiting. The speculation is that it's partially torn but we don't honestly know at this point. "So until we actually talk to the doctor directly and get results, I don't want to speculate." Opposing defenses, however, are free to speculate that they may have an easier time containing the high-octane Quakers this fall than in previous years. Fellow wide receiver Brandon Carson -- whose 28 catches for 469 yards and four touchdowns last fall are respectable by any standard -- will now bear the burden of being the Quakers' go-to guy on offense. When asked whether he would feel any additional pressure with O'Neill out, Carson responded simply, "No, only because the fact that Doug is out means that his catches will go to the other receivers." The senior wideout retained confidence in his teammates' ability to handle the game situation. "Once they get a couple of plays under their belts, they'll be all set," Carson said. "We'll have the same three-, four- and five-wide receiver sets." This latest development puts more pressure on Quakers receivers such as Jay Battung (12 catches in '98), Colin Smith (two catches) and several others who have seen no considerable game action. Bagnoli clearly recognized the scope of this loss. "When you look at the receiving corps -- where we've [already] lost some experience -- and now if you add Doug to that, we're still pretty athletic, but we've lost a tremendous amount of game experience," Bagnoli said. Without O'Neill on Saturday against Dartmouth, the Quakers' offense will probably feature a large variety of plays. In last season's opener, O'Neill torched the Big Green with six catches for 62 yards. Still, Bagnoli was not overly concerned. "We're going to have to spread the ball around regardless," Bagnoli said. "We have all the tight ends back with a tremendous amount of experience under their belts. [Fullback] Brian Cosmello has a tremendous amount of experience under his belt. "The offense has always been predicated on spreading the ball around to seven or eight guys anyways." Unfortunately for the Quakers, at least for the time being, one of those seven or eight guys will not be Doug O'Neill.