Most of you guys on here know that I'm a reasonable poster--I don't troll this board looking for hot take reactions. I have a track record. I have waited a couple of years to call someone out for this, but I think it is warranted. We have been one of the most injured teams in the past two seasons that I can remember. Both major injuries and soft tissue. The training personnel in the NFL is supposed to be one of the most qualified at handling this and they should be held just as accountable as front office and coaches. Along with our coaching staff, our entire training staff needs to go this offseason as well. This is unacceptable. I would ask die hard fans to support this call to fire our training staff!
This data seems to support your logic, mind you its from 2015-2018 https://www.sportfacts.org/nfl-injuries-by-team/ We haven't gotten any better since Accountability...
We lost 82 players to injury but 81 of those injuries were to Chris Ivory’s hamstrings. The other was Sheldon’s lobotomy. The Giants aren’t too far behind. Are these just punters breaking down from overuse?
Don't think players going on IR is a very good indication of anything. You have a rookie who has a niggle when drafted and don't want to put him on the roster, but don't want to expose him to waivers? IR him. A WR land heavily and tears an ACL. He's on IR. There's lots of reasons a player can end up on IR that have nothing to do with the S&C coach.
True--but it is also true there's no evidence that is made public that our current regime are having a positive effect on whatever S&C is supposed to accomplish. I imagine some form of job performance assessment occurs--just showing up and having the guys like you is typically not good enough. Would be interested to know what is expected from a good job in this area.
We need 100% natural grass instead of our disgusting artificial field turf; that'll become a nice start to say the least. "The 49ers played the Jets in MetLife Stadium in Week 2. Their defensive line was ravaged by two ACL tears during that contest, with both Bosa and Thomas going down. Garoppolo sprained his right ankle and attempted to play through it before coming out of the game and subsequently missing Week 3. Mostert sprained his MCL and missed Week 3, as well. "Guys seemed to be getting stuck in the ground more than regularly," Arik Armstead told reporters after the 49ers' Week 2 win. "A bunch of our players went down. It wasn’t real fun to be a part of and see happen to your teammates."
Yes. The Mets too to some degree. I don't think it's as simple as cleaning house with the training staff. In fact it may have very little to do with them.
I have a fringe theory as to why players have so many knee injuries and lower body injuries (beyond the low hits to avoid penalties). I feel like players use too much tape and too many braces on their lower joints that creates tension. A brace is meant to keep something in place when a muscle is sprained or other injury occurs, not when you're healthy. A lot of places tape their ankles and such and then cut as if they have no limitations (which they don't because they're not injured). That puts more stress on the other joints because there's resistance in the joint that's taped. I think these both are correct. I don't think it's necessarily the strength and conditioning teams fault. But when you have the onslaught of injuries that this teams experienced (even if it's by chance - which it is sometimes) I think you have to look to make a change. It's organizational though to an extent as well. We have horrible depth so when we have a key injury the spot goes from maybe a 6/10 in talent at the highest spots to a 1/10. We also have a history of drafting players with injury concerns.
I have an even more fringe theory about injuries: too much equipment. All the padding and armor enable players to hurl their bodies around like missiles, causing injuries not only to those they strike but to themselves. I also think that 1-way football contributes too - when players don't have to worry about "payback" they can hit as hard as they want, but if they had to be on the receiving end maybe they'd be a little less vicious. Go back to two-way football, with minimal equipment and the injuries and their severity will go down. And yes, I am being serious, but no, I'm not naïve enough to think this will ever happen.
I don't think it's that much of a fringe theory. The helmet is the cause of all of this head trauma. I can't say I really know much about rugby and Aussie Rules football. Maybe our foreign friends can tell us. Do those sports have all the concussions the NFL has? @ConcordeChops @donkey @K'OB - I know there's more of you so forgive me of who I'm forgetting. The one-way, two-way thing is a bit fringy.
I'll also put forth a solution I know won't be adopted. If a player causes an injury and gets a flag on the play, they're out as long as the injured player is out (maybe make it max 8-weeks). This fucking tackling by throwing ones body at the knees has got to stop too. Talking about hits like they put on Nick Boyle last week.
Until this last 3 years there was no such thing as concussion in rugby big lads play hard, injuries are for pussies etc then there was a spate of deaths in teenage rugby players, young kids taking a big hit and carrying on and collapsing later at home, I think this brought in a lot more awareness and rules that were implemented across the board, this includes football as well but you do still see some players looking dazed waving their arms saying I fine I'm fine and playing on, the referees are meant to step in with the doctor present and double check and have them subbed if needed. I am a long way off an expert and I haven't played for 18 years so maybe one of the others can add something more concrete. Imo concussions in rugby/football will have always been there but now really bad ones are looked at more seriously. On a personal note i two stories... I was smashed in the face by a flailing elbow playing football, teammates said it was definitely a snide attack and not accidental, I played on but my eye was nearly closed by the end, I had a massive headache the rest of the night but never gave it much thought of going to A&E. My son played rugby at school and was imo undersized for the role he had and he came back after a game and he was visibly dazed but again as we are old school we just kept an eye on him and he was fine but that was about a year before the deaths and it shows a lack of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, we were lucky nothing came of it but brought up on injuries in sport happen and you just get up and get on with it, playing through injuries is another thing that was regularly done and as I can testify to not good for your long term health.
Just to add to @K'OB above, I don't think there are the numbers of concussions in UK sports that are suffered in the NFL, mainly because theres nothing comparable to an RB trying to get an extra yard through an entire defensive line, as most interactions are one-on-one, not one-on-five. However, there's currently a big focus on long-term effects of head contact. Similar to CTE in NFL, there are a number of investigations into football (soccer) players with early onset dementia probably caused by heading a heavy, wet ball for a 15 year career. Heading the ball in soccer is already banned in quite a lot of junior leagues.
I would have thought that Justus Galac looking like a less scrawny version of Philly Stackz was reason enough to fire him.
MetLife has a game almost every week between the Jets and the Giants. 100% natural turf is unlikely to work due to the heavy use and the autumn/winter weather patterns in the northeast. The old stadium had a field tray system where they could replace parts of the field every week if necessary. This was apparently a fairly expensive system that did not give a guarantee of a good surface from week to week.
I think most of these problems in soccer came from years ago, when the ball was made of leather and soaked up so much water on a wet day that it could easily double its weight. Todays soccer balls do not soak up water like the old one did, but it must still have an effect on your brain if you head a ball that has travelled 30+ yards before it meets your head.
I’ve been saying this for years. The other benefit of two way players is they’ll have to be quite a bit smaller and fitter than some of the human continents you see today.
I'll put my two penny worth in about concussion in Rugby Union as I do have more than a little experience with it - former player, qualified RFU coach and Society Referee and former County Manager and Coach. In days gone by concussion was treated as just one of those things in rugby and it was not so unusual to see a player staggering around the field after a collision - remember, we don't have unlimited substitutions in rugby. Most concussions in Union happen when a players head hits an opponents knee, elbow or shoulder and referees are told now to instantly stop play if a player sustains a hit to the head - its much easier to see a head injury without a helmet. If in any doubt now a player has to leave the field and undergo a head injury assessment from the doctor in attendance at the match. The player is replaced by another, until the decision is made whether or not they can continue. I think its fair to say that there are more concussions in American Football because many players seem to think that they will be ok as they have a helmet on. Remember concussion has a cumulative effect and all those hits on the head in High School, College and the NFL all add up. I'm a college football fan, as well as a Jets fan and up until a few years ago many players would literally "tackle" with their helmet, but that seems to have dropped off now with the Targeting rule. Its a contact sport, so concussion will always be a risk, but I think its fair to say that incidents are certainly managed better now than they have ever been.