Brian Dzenis: YSU struggling with accountability issues

It’s been at least three consecutive weeks of hearing about mental mistakes and missed assignments from Youngstown State football coach Bo Pelini and his players, the specifics of which are starting to blur together.

All of the big four U.S. professional sports are going on. Overseas, the top of the standings are tight in the various soccer leagues of Europe. Here in Youngstown, excitement is building each week for a resurgent East football team and for the various tournaments across high school sports this fall.

It’s getting challenging to keep allocating mental real estate to the Penguins (2-4, 1-2 Missouri Valley Football Conference). Can’t blame fans if they check out. One of the remaining questions for the Penguins this season is if they’re going do the same.

The thing that’s bothersome about all the talk about not being mentally with the program is that for the most part, it’s the same players making the same mistakes. Missed assignments in the run game? YSU has used the same five offensive lineman in every game, save for the game vs. Valparaiso, when Devon Robinson started at right tackle, but the team’s participation report shows incumbent Charles Baldwin still played. All the other skill positions have by and large stayed the same.

On defense, the safety position had a fluid couple of weeks before settling in with Chrispin Lee and Devanere Crenshaw. A targeting suspension on Cash Mitchell and an injury to Christiaan Randall-Posey forced some shuffling at linebacker. The defensive line has been a rotation since fall camp.

Then there’s special teams, oh boy. Who would have guessed that the first specialist to see a mid-game benching was punter Mark Schuler? Yes, he’s last in the conference in yards per punt, but he’s also downed opponents inside the 20 on nine of his 25 punts this year. In an informal eye test, punting hasn’t been a serious issue at YSU.

So he shanks one last week against South Dakota State and gets yanked in favor of kicker Zak Kennedy pulling double duty. The irony of it all.

Across all four tiers of NCAA football, there aren’t many teams that match YSU in field goal futility. Kennedy is five for 12 on field goal attempts, including one block and a bobbled snap. Only five teams in America match or exceed those seven botched attempts. FBS Auburn’s Anderson Carlson is 10 for 18. In FCS football, Nicholls State’s Lorran Fonseca is nine for 17. In Division II, two kickers are three for 10 and one D-III kicker is two for nine.

The point of this morbid curiosity is asking where’s the line when consistently making mistakes is unacceptable and is that standard the same for every player? Schuler, whose numbers this year are slightly down from what he’s usually done in his career, can get yanked for someone who is struggling mightily at his regular job. Loyalty is an admirable trait, but it’s just not working out for Kennedy.

This situation sticks out because of how dire the kicking game is. How many others are out there?

So for tonight’s contest with South Dakota, does anything change, or does this game blend into a haze of self-inflicted errors culminating in losses?

Brian Dzenis covers YSU sports for The Vindicator. Write him at bdzenis@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @Brian_Dzenis.