Archer: Cowboys hope to quiet hamstring issues

Cotton

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Cowboys hope to quiet hamstring issues

March, 4, 2014

By Todd Archer | ESPNDallas.com


IRVING, Texas -- One of the Dallas Cowboys’ homework assignments in the offseason has been to figure out a way to avoid hamstring injuries.

Twelve players suffered strains of varying levels and missed either game or practice time in 2013: Miles Austin, Morris Claiborne, Sean Lee, Justin Durant,Dwayne Harris, Bruce Carter, Danny McCray, Barry Church, Dez Bryant, Lance Dunbar, Gavin Escobar and Terrance Williams.

The shortened offseason conditioning program could play a factor in the increase in injuries, but it has not affected every team. The Cowboys have studied other teams’ approaches and injury numbers to come up with a solution.

Coach Jason Garrett said one possibility is cutting back on the time spent on the field, especially early in the offseason.

“It is valuable to do the football stuff. We don’t feel like there’s a lot of football stuff right now,” Garrett said. “We want to be careful about how much we take away from that. But there’s a couple weeks prior to all that stuff starting. We’ve talked about tweaking the daily schedule and what we’re doing those first couple weeks as we start to lay the foundation for the offseason.”

While many players train on their own before the official offseason program starts in April, there is only a two-week period of training before players get on the field for teaching sessions.

“[Strength and conditioning coach Mike Woicik] I know is certainly not happy with it,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said. “[Athletic trainers] Jim Maurer and Britt Brown0 are not happy. I know Jason’s not happy with it and I damn sure know Jerry [Jones] and I are not happy with it. So we’re looking at ways to try to work on that.”

One way might be doing less instead of more.
 

boozeman

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Woicik is a caveman in terms of modern training techniques. The problem could be he wears these guys out in terms of how much work is compressed into a short period of time.

This is not how it was when he was taking guys in the 1990s and working their asses off. Now the new CBA restricts what can be done with these players and how long the trainers have access to them.

I like what the Eagles have done, which is basically bring in a college training staff that uses nutrition as a base. They also understand and appreciate what it takes to work with a group of players that you have limited physical access with.

The Eagles and Jets had teams with the least amount of injury time lost last year. That needs to be where we are looking for possible solutions.
 

BipolarFuk

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What was that movie where a player gets hurt and they kill him in the ambulance so they can clone him later?

That could solve the injury problem.
 

Rev

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All you have to do is release Austin. Hamstring issue solved.
 

data

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If it weren't fer those gosh-darn injuries....

I won't be surprised if jerruh takes the angle that we don't need FA or draft contributors because we have a playoff contender if we overcome injuries.
 
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