The lingering effects of the NFL lockout

The NFL lockout may have come and now it has gone, but I really believe we are seeing the lingering effects of the cancellation of all those OTA’s and mini camps. Yesterday Detroit Lions rookie running back, Mikel Leshoure, was lost for the season after tearing his Achilles tendon. Too often we see many rookies suffer injuries when they step up to play with the big boys of the NFL, but so far in training camps we have seen an alarming number of these kinds of injuries. It leads us to assume that the players need their off season activities to avoid these kind of injuries. I mean we have not even played the first pre-season game yet.

By my unofficial reckoning, and confirmed through NFL live on that four letter network, and other reports on the web, 10 NFL players have suffered a torn Achilles in training camp. In addition to Leshoure we have; Tennessee Titans corner Ryan Mouton and WR OJ Murdock, Oakland Raiders WR Derrick Jones, New York Giants corner Bruce Johnson, Cleveland Browns punter Reggie Hodges, San Francisco 49er corner Curtis Holcomb, Cincinnati Bengals LB Roddrick Muckelroy, and New Orleans Saints LB Jeremiah Hunter.

While this is football and injuries do happen, especially this specific injury to players who tend to run a lot. I really think that the lack of off season conditioning programs is the cause for this sudden rash of Achilles injuries. Sure some of the teams and some of the players held players practices, but football players are very unlikely to go full out without the presence of the coaching staff and the media. I think those practices were largely a waste of time, beyond building comradeship among the players participating.