How can Injuries be addressed?

[hawaiianpunch]

I made a typo on the last Selection "London" referring to London Fletcher.

We have had so many injuries. How can the coaches help the players get and stay healthy? Is it a Diet Plan? Is it a different weightlifting approach with static contractions? Perhaps old school effective Plyometrics? I want to know the clans take is on keeping players healthy in this day in the NFL especially because the rams cannot stay healthy to save their lives. What do you think? Should we force the players to change their diets?

I believe changing nutrition would be top on my list. But can we expect NFL players to do that?

How the heck is London Fletcher still playing healthy and starting!

[general counsel]

I see no other rationale explanation other than bad luck. I do not believe that diet has anything to do with a high ankle sprain, knee injury, collision on the field that causes a concussion etc. For whatever reason, we have been clobbered by injuries. In 1999, we were pretty darn lucky all year. Luck is an important part of success in the NFL.

I would say that our personnel assesment has not been great and our teams of late have lacked real depth at many positions, so injuries may hurt us worse than they hurt the best teams. The packers won the super bowl with about 14 guys on IR last year but had plenty of guys step in.

London Fletcher, like walter payton and a select few others, is truly a physical marvel.
Needless to say, he is having a better year than Jaime Duncan (we can thank Lovie for that debacle)

ramming speed to all

general counsel

[sadhappy]

Seahawks went through this towards the end of the Ruskell years.

Injuries to starters are gonna happen. It seems the only real answer is quality depth. Seems If a team is thin behind the starters the backups tend to get hurt pretty quickly and the whole thing just kinda unravels.

[richtree]

Less of a chance to get hurt when you are the better athlete in a contact sport.....

And the Rams are not superior in many positions on the field....

[laram0]

We had the same injury issues when Linehan was here. Not so much with Vermeil though. So does that lead to hard work and conditioning?

[Keenum]

I said during the last years of the Linehan era that the conditioning just doesn't look up to par. Not only did we have a lot of injuries, but we played our best ball in the 1st half... and sometimes just horrible in the 2nd half.

Sound familiar?

I don't doubt that a lot of the players didn't stay in top shape during the lockout (and I think others teams like the Chargers are examples of this as well). I'm not blaming the lockout here, I'm blaming any of the players who decided to take a vacation during this time.

[md8]

I was just thinking about this yesterday. Is it just really bad luck or is something to blame, like the player's conditioning?

I don't know, but it is strange to have so many injuries every year.

[sosa39rams]

Theres no way its bad luck. There is just absolutely no way. The amount of guys we continually use every year? I doubt it. Maybe our strength and conditioning coaches need to be removed. Maybe the trainer Reggie Scott? Diets? I'm not sure. The turf? Get that garbage outta there right now and rip down that damn roof. Our guys have been tearing ACL's all over the damn place. Some injuries are freak injuries, but dang. Were far past that.

[RockinRam]

I think it comes down to this:

1) Attitude at Rams Park

2) Sub-par weight/strength program

3) Terrible luck



People might question the first one.

How does that have anything to do with getting injured Rockin?



Well, when the attitude and environment at Rams Park is one of a weak loser, players start to get that into their heads. Especially when you have a feeble coach such as Spags, players feed off that.

That results in our players being the ones who are getting hit harder, rather than playing aggressively and being the ones who dish out the pain.

When you are winning and you are playing fiercely, you usually tend to injure more people rather than getting injured yourself.

[NJ Ramsfan1]

Yes, luck certainly plays a role in the health of an NFL football team. But teams must also help themselves by exercising good judgment when drafting and having a good pre-season program in place.

It starts with guys who have an injury history in college. They should be avoided like the plague. And unlike good teams, bad teams cannot, repeat CANNOT take chances on guys like Danario Alexander, who will never get better physically and never produce for a stretch long enough to warrant keeping him.

I am completely convinced that a superior strength and conditioning program won't prevent, but will certainly minimize muscle and joint injuries. Muscles that are adequately taxed during training/pre season drills and exercises won't be as prone to break down during the season. And because strong muscles surround and protect joints, many sprains and tears can then be prevented.

Ever notice how most of the bad teams seem to have an ungodly number of injuries? Coincidence? Player toughness- i.e. one's willingness to go out there and sacrifice himself regardless of team record or obstacles in his path- is one of those intangibles that can't be measured on a stat sheet. (See: Youngblood, Jack.)

A lot of due diligence must be done to prevent these yearly problems.

[Trevor]

No way to avoid this unfortunately. This is just a part of football. If you look at about 90% of the injuries. I would label them as "Freak" injuries. Conditioning has nothing to do with the injuries that happened to the players. Only one I can attribute injury due to poor conditioning is Sj39 pulled hammy on that TD run vs the Eagles. All the other ones were pretty much freakish.