Do players scrimmage too much given the number of injuries?
by uclahy on Aug 28, 2011 2:58 PM PDT
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PrintI recently read two football stories, one from the present and one from the past, that make me wonder. Do today's college players scrimmage too much?
The present story is one about a rash of injuries to PAC 12 football players as they get ready for the upcoming season. Many teams already have between four and eight players seriously injured. For once we have not had that problem. Knock on wood.
The one from the past is about our own Head Coach Red Sanders. I found an excellent review of his coaching philosophy, on the Vanderbilt University website, where he was a tremendously successful coach before surprising his friends and colleagues to matriculate to UCLA. Of course, what he did at UCLA is also the stuff of legend.
Surprisingly to me, he is quoted as saying that he stressed the "classroom" to coach his players and advocated no more than seven hours of "scrimmaging" a week. Having never played football I have no idea if this is much less than the normal time players have to scrimmage between games, but it certainly is much less than Spring and fall camps where these injury bugs seem to thrive.
I have seen this same debate from time to time in the pro ranks with some coaches deemphasizing hard, physical practices between games. I also seem to remember a highly successful Div. II or III coach that espoused little or no contact drills between games.
Of course, Sanders was in the era when players played both ways. One year he only had 37 players on his team. Amazing. So maybe they really had to be careful back then.
I'm curious what more knowledgeable, past football players have to say on this subject.
Do today's players practice too hard between the weekly games that are physically demanding enough on their own? What do you think?
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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Do you have any links Hy?
these sound like good reads.
My take on your question is that it is balancing act. You have to get your guys out there and approximating game time speed and hitting if you want them actually performing at game speed. From purely a numerical stand point it makes sense that the more you scrimmage the more chances you take of somebody getting hurt. For my part, I would error on the side of aggressiveness and practice hard and risk some injury just to make sure the team is ready.
I think once your team is playing like a well oiled machine it’s OK to take the foot off the gas a little bit and trust that it will show up on gameday.
The best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother. John Wooden
Increase in Injuries
can be attributed to the speed and physicallity of the game, IMO. They kids are looking like grown men nowadays. Keeping contact to a minimum sounds good but then you can have a team that isn’t going to tackle well, or run through hits.
This is one area where I think having a higher number of scholarship athletes could help. Not sure if that is something the NCAA would consider but having more bodies allows coaches to cycle guys through and limit each guys contact while still allowing the team to scrimage and test themselves in a live environment.
Going to argue, not enough practice...
Everything gets jammed into the past few weeks, so its extra stressfull and not introduced as gradually as it could be for the bodies to adapt and get used to the stress at high levels.
Also agree with King J77 above, kids are bigger and faster than ever before. In the end the human body can only tolerate so much force before reaching its limits…
Medical and physical health technology has advanced as well.
I’d like to believe that physical trainers, physicians, doctors, and other medical personnel part of the program can perform better therapy for the players and keep them in better shape. So maybe we could afford to have these longer scrimmages.
Not at UCLA
no way the trainiers and physicians can keep up with the curse of Spaulding field and Adidas. lol
This year vs Last year
At least thus far, it seems like we have been more fortunate on the injury front. I think part of it is luck, but it seems like the coaches and players have been well attuned to all the injuries in the past year and have made adjustments to practices which have made a difference.
I remember some of the players talking about how they have stressed smart hitting and that these guys are on our team so we don’t wanna bash their brains out and injure our own guys.
Also, I think they have been prepping much better this year in that they were installing the plays in the first couple of weeks, but now are upping the tempo, which they did not do in the past. This allows them to be playing at game speed without a full scrimmage, hopefully avoiding some injuries.
Anyways, lets hope fortune continues our way…
I think players practice more, period, nowadays compared to decades ago….guys are year-yound football with offseason training, weights, meetings, practice, spring and summer ball, etc. I don’t think Coach Sanders was referring to actual “scrimmaging” (11 on 11, or 7 on 7’s) but just field time in pads….I’m pretty sure every team in the nation is well over 7 hours and I don’t think you’d be doing yourself any favors if you stuck to that limit or did more chalk talk and drills without contact (I believe SUC went without tackling during their camp last year as they were worried about injuries since their numbers were down, and that definitely showed up during their opener in Hawaii).
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