Eliminating pads in football practice preposterous

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This article was published 18/09/2017 (2940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The CFL and the Canadian Football League Players’ Association came together, and announced a united front on two issues this past week. One will benefit the health and well-being of the players, and the other will jeopardize those same principles, while providing little actual value other than as a public-relations maneuver.

If you’re just hearing this now, the league will be implementing a third bye week during the regular season in 2018 in an attempt to eradicate “short weeks” for the players, as well as the complete elimination of padded practices during the regular season. There is no doubt these changes will be well received by most of the players, but that doesn’t mean they are both necessarily good for the game.

The change that will definitely benefit the players is the added bye week. Playing games on short weeks, while you’re still recovering from the last contest, can turn minor ailments into serious ones, and make athletes more reliant on pain killers and anti-inflammatories to weather the storm. Increasing rest time is always a win when it comes to player safety, but the effect of the second amendment is less clear.

If given the choice, there is no disputing most players would choose not to wear pads during the week. Most players would also choose to not condition regularly, work out seriously during the week or watch a lot of film, too, though, so what is popular with the players isn’t always what’s best for the game.

Even at the professional level, most players do things in football because they have to, and are told to, and it’s always been the job of the coaches to keep an eye on what unpleasant things are necessary in order to keep the phases of their football teams operating at the highest level. Judging from some of the reactions from coaches around the CFL about these changes, not only were they not consulted on these decisions, but they are less than thrilled with the one that eliminates their ability to practise their team in pads.

The first thing to realize about this no pads provision is that currently nobody is hitting hard during practice during the regular season in the existing environment. Nobody gets tackled to the ground, and nobody purposefully bangs heads with each other. Even those teams that were struggling and getting after it in pads once a week, it is nowhere near the kind of violence you experience on game day. The pads are there so you can practise your techniques most effectively, give you a closer feeling to actual game-type simulations, and most of all, to protect you.

So the suggestion that eliminating padded practices throughout the week will also contribute to player safety, is actually preposterous. Whether the players wear pads or not, they are going to be doing the same drills. That means one on ones, inside run, skelly and team periods, are all still going to happen, only without the protection of pads. If you’re a lineman, you can’t avoid contact in any drill, so you are either getting hit with pads on, or with pads off.

Things don’t slow down either, without pads. On the days that players traditionally practise without pads, the biggest emphasis is always on speed and tempo, and keeping things going as fast as possible. When you have the players doing the same drills, a minimum of three times a week, without any padding, the potential for injuries is actually higher than when you are wearing them.

Coaches have always had two concerns when it comes to practising without pads. The first is that it isn’t realistic, and doesn’t simulate game-type conditions enough. For instance, as a defensive lineman, how do you work on holding your ground against a double team without shoulder pads on? You can’t. You need to be wearing game equipment to practise, learn and develop game techniques.

The second concern is that practising without pads make you practise higher, and you aren’t able to hone your leverage applications. If football is a game of muscle memory and repetition, and all week long you are playing higher because you aren’t wearing pads, your propensity is to do this exact same thing on game day. Inside run drills, and one-on-one lineman drills, which are all about pad level and the application of leverage, are virtually useless without pads, and you don’t get the same fit and fill without wearing them.

The point of practices during the regular season is twofold: the first is to implement strategy that gives you a competitive advantage over your opponent, and to get enough repetitions performing these tweaked nuances in as realistic football environment as possible so you can utilize these plays. The other thing practices are designed to do is to correct and address the mistakes and vulnerabilities you displayed in the prior week’s game and to correct them. When you don’t allow football teams in the CFL to don pads at least once a week, you make achieving both of these goals harder.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97