How Hurt Players Help Teammates
July 24th, 2014
Lovie Smith explained how he turned negatives into positives this spring
Players not able to participate in practices, OTAs or minicamp? Fans just go absolutely bananas. “Cut him! He can’t hack it!” the fans scream.
Of course, Bucs coach Lovie Smith would want players to participate in all workouts and. Rather than dwelling on the negative if guys are sidelined, Lovie believes he can turn a negative into a positive, so he said this afternoon while addressing the local pen and mic club at One Buc Palace.
“Carl Nicks didn’t work. Dashon Goldson didn’t work out. Mark Barron didn’t work out [in offseason OTAs because they were less than 100 percent],” Lovie said. “We got other players a lot better.”
When Nicks was on the sidelines in Tampa, rookie guard Kadeem Edwards got a helluva lot of snaps with the first team. For a guy from a Division I-AA school, those snaps were invaluable. Same goes for the back-up safeties having to go against Vincent Jackson and Mike Evans (though he was out injured a lot) and Tim Wright, with Goldson and Barron watching.
Of course, at some point, guys unable to participate will hurt themselves, and the team. All three of the aforementioned guys are seasoned veterans and barring being unable to answer the bell, are locked in for a starting position.
But indirectly, despite not practicing, they were helping their lesser teammates and backups.
July 24th, 2014 at 2:15 pm
That’s a problem, these guys have had months, in Nicks’ case, years to heal…..so what can we expect when someone pounds on them……??
Imagine if you can, a scenario where both Goldson and Barron were both out of the lineup…….not pretty.
July 24th, 2014 at 2:49 pm
It’s football. We’ll have at least a dozen players on IR by seasons end.
In this league, you are only as good as your depth.
July 24th, 2014 at 4:05 pm
Read something that tracked play time of starting line ups and the like and they mentioned something like 80-90% of all plays have a substitute on the field and a very, very low percentage of plays are ever actually run with all 11 “starters” from the depth chart on the field at once.
It is what it is, the depth will always play no matter what.
July 24th, 2014 at 6:05 pm
Starters helping subs by not taking first string reps…..wow, that’s really putting a positive spin on things.
July 24th, 2014 at 7:33 pm
The second part of helping (while sidelined), is ‘coaching’ the sub who’s playing your position. Barron and Goldson have a better feel for the Falcons, Saints, and Panthers than the new coaches. *If* there are any nuances to covering the guys that make up six games, these are the guys who can help.
July 24th, 2014 at 11:33 pm
You guys crack me up it’s a whole new world in bucs land. The coach is talking other players getting valuable reps. Cause he knows players will get hurt part of the game and we finally have depth were other players are getting valuable reps and you all are getting pissed about what if he is out. That’s the point other players who may become starters are learning with the first team as if they were first team players so if there is an injury they can jump right in. It’s called great coaching let’s get used to it again tampa bay. Can’t wait for regular season we finally are going to be relevant again