Stephens Out for Year, Rhodes Dismissed

BGSU Football: Sources tell me DB Clint Stephens will likely miss the 2016 season with a knee injury. Big blow to the secondary.

— Jordan Strack (@JordanStrack) June 15, 2016

Well, not a good couple of weeks for the Falcon football program.

First, as you can see above, Clint Stephens had a season-ending injury.  I understand this occurred in the spring game.  This is obviously bad most of all for Clint, who is a promising player and had logged significant snaps over both his seasons at BG.  It is also bad for the secondary.  It may cause some moving around...I think Gourdine might have been lined up to move to S but maybe now he stays at CB and Ben Hale starts at S.  Either way, you need a lot of D-backs in today's game and Stephens is a playmaker.  This one will be tough.

Second, Robbie Rhodes has been dismissed from the program.  For those not conversant with the details, Rhodes came to BG after he was dismissed at Baylor for drug-related violations (something that has come to mean a lot more in the past few weeks...i.e., when a whole report was published about guys not getting dismissed at Baylor).  He was a very highly touted recruit (5-star) when he went to Waco and just for that reason alone was viewed as having a chance to make a big impact in the MAC.

He never did.  He made only 3 catches for the Falcons last year.

When he came to BG, I expressed some concerns.   I'm not crazy about picking up guys who were let go for serious violations at other schools.  I don't want to see us become that kind of school.  For whatever it was worth, the willingness to take transfers with bad records was cited when Art Briles was let go, and we know that Babers said Briles was his hero.  I didn't want BG to get to be like that.  Rhodes was involved in the bar fight that caused Brian Thomas to leave the program.

I don't know how much people were counting on from Rhodes, but with Lewis and Dieter gone, this was his shot.  Of the 8 WRs on BG's season-ending depth chart, five (Lewis, Dieter, Rhodes, Burbrink, Coby) are gone.  Remaining are Moore, Scotty Miller and Redding.  BG also picked up Darrion Landry, a JUCO WR, and Da'Mario Jones as a graduate transfer from UM. Deric Phouthavong got a little time, there are a couple more guys on the roster and four in the signing class, meaning they have literally just arrived.