Starters (or possibles) with Injuries of some sort: Lee, Helms, David, Alexander, Beckwith. Others: Cutrera, Theriot, Aghayere. None seem serious in terms of season ending. I was just wondering what you old-timers think about this list in terms of previous years. Normal? Concerning? I think Colt David and Beckwith concern me the most, but according to Scout Beckwith should be back in 4 days or so.
all of the above players will be 100% for the opener. Show me a team with no injuries and I'll show you a team not playing hard enough.
It's a light injury load so far. Often we have a season-ending injury in practice. Nick's teams had light injuries in August practice from not hitting so much and doing "thump" drills. Nick liked to get in more reps and used less full tackling which also cut down on injuries. But we were also noticeably unphysical in the first couple of games, too. The linemen got pushed around by smaller OOC guys in the opener more than once in Nicks days. Les does more hitting and we enter the season hitting harder which I like. We have taken more injuries, but not enough to kill us and I think Les has found the right balance.
I hated how long it would take Saban's teams to get up to speed each year. That killed us against Va Tech in '02 and was a problem against Oregon State in '04.
In '03, we were really lucky with injuries, and UGA (who was ranked very highly that year, too) was bitten badly by the injury bug. It made a big difference. For that matter, we were pretty badly bitten ourselves last year. Hopefully, we're due for a relatively injury-free season. Please!
