It was make or break time for the Kent State football team Saturday and they became completely broken, literally — quarterback Julian Edelman’s broken right wrist — and figuratively.

The Flashes can kiss 2007 goodbye and mark it as a lost season. No more Mid-American Conference title hopes. No more bowl game aspirations. Not until next year.

Kent State is really hurting right now, especially at the quarterback position. Backup Anthony Magazu is on crutches after an ankle sprain at Ohio State, and Edelman will miss the remainder of the year with a broken right wrist.

The always-tough Edelman has actually been playing with a torn posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) in his left knee since the Kentucky game. Something tells me he would still try to play if his broken wrist could even grip the football.

So, as this team begins to look at the 2008 season, it could be time to burn the redshirt on freshman quarterback Giorgio Morgan. At 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds, one thing is for sure: Morgan can throw the football.

He doesn’t yet have the scrambling ability or the leadership capabilities that Edelman possesses, but he does have a strong arm and the size to see over the line. And that is not to say Morgan can’t scramble either, but not many people possess the slithery running style of Edelman.

The question becomes: Do you save him until next season and let him have four complete years of eligibility? Or do you let him play the final four games of this season and prepare for three solid years at Kent State? Either way, Edelman is back next year as well.

These last four games should be very interesting for the Flashes. Now that there is not much to play for, it is time for what Kent State coach Doug Martin calls a character check. Will these players continue to struggle and begin pointing fingers or will they pull together and salvage this season and have a winning record?

Anyone who has talked Kent State football with me this year knows that I think this team is the most talented team in the MAC. Unfortunately, they rarely play like it. Correction: They usually play like it outside the 20-yard lines. Once inside the ever so important red zone it becomes a comedy of errors.

Turnovers, penalties and as sophomore running back Eugene Jarvis says “little stupid stuff that we shouldn’t be doing,” happen every time this team gets a whiff of the endzone.

Saturday the Flashes did get a great job of protecting the football, but it was the penalties that crept in. Ten of them for 89 yards in the game to be exact.

In these final four games the Flashes will look to cleanup those penalties and build for the future. This season is no longer the championship season everyone hoped for, but now it’s about character. Who has it? We’ll find out.

Contact sports editor Jonas Fortune

at [email protected].