Droughns' Diary

	Find out more about Reuben Droughns and Oregon at www.goducks.com.

Dec. 3, 1999

Oregon's senior tailback Reuben Droughns offers his insight into the Ducks' season. After two weeks off from practice, Reuben talks about getting back to work on the practice field, the upcoming Sun Bowl game against No. 13 Minnesota and the all-star bowls afterwards.

“It’s been a different time for me recently in that I’ve had a couple of weeks off, almost completely from football. It’s so great to be able to rest, and I’ve been trying to concentrate on healing up and getting ready for the last game of the season. Although some like the break for the mental part, the physical rest has been the biggest thing for me. As the season was going on, I felt that mentally I was getting stronger, football-wise. Physically, I was slowly getting better also, but you have to overcome an amount of physical punishment from each game.”

“The last game at Oregon State was an important game for me, and I almost made it a mission to do well. I had heard some OSU people saying, ‘Reuben Droughns shouldn’t even show up to the game.’ I remember walking out after Friday’s practice before the game, and the OSU fans were saying ‘You might as well go home.’ I was thinking, ‘I’m going to go home all right - I’m going to go home with a win.’ I made sure to keep that in my mind, and kept thinking, ‘These guys aren’t going to be able to stop me.’ That helped because I had heard that they had one of the best defenses in the Pac-10, and that they had guys that were always flying around to the ball. Then they said that our guys weren’t going to be able to hit the paper routes and that our defense can’t hit. I definitely wanted to go out there and prove that we were a more aggressive team.”

“Looking ahead I can get used to something new, preparing for a bowl game after having to miss last year. It’s an exciting feeling, and I can’t wait -- I wish it was next week. It’s hard to wait a whole month to play a football game. We’re definitely going to keep our focus, and try to go out there and do our job.”

“It’s good that we have some experience with dealing with the bowl scenario, so we know that we can/and how to finish the job. Since Coach Bellotti has been here, we haven’t won as many bowl games as we would have liked, and we definitely want to leave him with a win. Especially me, as a senior, Fletch (Michael Fletcher), as a senior, Terry Miller, all those guys. I’m sure they don’t want to go out there, like last year, and have two straight losses in a bowl game. They want to have that feeling that they did after the Las Vegas Bowl.”

“Looking down the road, there’s still more football and I will have to make some decisions early on, but I’m not looking towards the NFL yet. First, I definitely need to make decisions about the Senior and the East/West Shrine Bowls. But I’m staying focused. I’m thinking about Minnesota right now. I’m actually breathing, sleeping and eating Minnesota, so to speak. As soon as they announced that we are playing the No. 13th ranked team - I got really excited ... anybody would be excited about that. It gives us an opportunity to show our stuff, and it gives us the opportunity to elevate the status of the Pac-10 Conference.”

“After El Paso, there will be a decision between the East/West and the Senior Bowls, and whichever one gives me the status that I would like to have. I think that the Senior Bowl will get me there in one way since the NFL coaches are coaching that game. But at the same time, they have some pretty physical practices. With my past injuries, I don’t know if I can take that chance right now, but I definitely want to. Wherever I play, it’ll be important that I show everybody that I am not injury-prone, and that I can play with anybody, in any situation.”

“I’m also in a situation where I have some things to prove, and it’s more my fault than anybody else’s. I need to make the right decisions at the right time. Going back to the UCLA game last year, maybe I should have run out of bounds, or dove forward. That injury still runs through my mind. I’m not saying that I could have done anything about it, but I felt that we could have gone very, very far last season if I was healthy. I’m not saying that we could have been national champions, but I think that we definitely could have beaten UCLA that game which was a turning point of the season.”