I just watched this story on Outside the Lines this morning on ESPN.
The gist of it is that there were several season ending injuries that occurred during a Houston Texans mini-camp due to contact. The NFL stipulates there is to be no contact during mini-camps, in which players do not wear pads. Apparently this is a big surprise to folks - not so much to me.
Guess what sports fans... this happens in college football also - and mostly for the same reasons. Coaches want contact in drills because it is the only way you can train a player to get better at live tempo and live speed. They are also told that for certain practices you can not have contact. But they get around it.
You line up offensive and defensive players who, if you've read Dark Side of the Game you'd know, really don't like each other at all, whatsoever, despite being on the same team. The natural tension, plus the fact guys are trying to win starting jobs and roster/travel spots almost guarantees players will still go 100% live even though they do not have pads on. If you have a boy scout player who does not go hard during one of these "non-contact" sessions, all a coach needs to do is point how that player is being lazy or is being a "pussy" and that situation is immediately remedied to the coaches liking. It's all social engineering, and football players are typically ants who will bitch about it, but not question it at the end of the day - as was the case with all but about Texans players from the aforementioned story.
The solution here is either to a) get rid of non-contact practices all-together as one commentator on the show pointed out or b) stipulate and enforce that if there is a non-contact practice that offensive players and defensive players CANNOT be involved in the same drill with each other, thus minimizing any chance of their being live contact.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment