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The Jets made a major move yesterday:
Here is the first paragraph of the press release:
“The New York Jets have established a new Athletic Care and Performance Department that will include the team’s athletic trainers, strength & conditioning and nutrition staffs in addition to a rehab department. Highly decorated Dr. Brad DeWeese, who was named director of high performance, will oversee the operation that also added Mike Nicolini, head strength & conditioning coach; Dr. Matt Sams, director of sports science; Dr. Robert Sausaman, assistant director of high performance; and Dr. Omar Ahmad, assistant strength & conditioning coach. The charge of the newly created department is to align the club’s athletic performance staffs to better position players for success.”
The tough part of this story is that the Jets’ old strength and conditioning department was let go, led by Justus Galac, who was with the team for 10 years.
He should be okay and get another job, but the thing you will hear a lot, when a move like this is made, is that is was done to cut down on injuries.
You will see that narrative all over in articles written about this change.
I think that is a little unfair to Galac and his staff.
Football is a brutal sport. How do you cut down on torn ACL injuries when a player is chopped at the knees, rotator cuff injuries from being driven into the turf shoulder first, broken legs from being sacked (like Joe Theissman and Alex Smith of the Washington Football Team), broken ribs (like Drew Brees who had 11 last year). You get the idea.
Maybe, just maybe, you can cut down on soft tissue injuries, like pulled groins and hamstrings, with new strategies, but I just think this whole idea that the new staff can come in and cut down on injuries significantly is Pollyanna.
The team’s new head strength & conditioning coach, Mike Nicolini, comes from the 49ers, a team that was absolutely ravaged by injuries last year. Nicolini was the assistant strength & conditioning coach there. Of course, I don’t blame Nicolini, just like I don’t blame Galac.
And this isn’t a shot at the team’s new Athletic Care and Performance Department. They also seem like very qualified individuals.
But in football, you can have the best strength and conditioning staff in the world, and still have a ton of injuries.
Of course, there might be ways the new staff can help improve performance with some of the things they will implement. From the press release:
“DeWeese was the head of sports physiology for the United States Olympic Committee’s Winter Division based in Lake Placid, NY, where he helped athletes to seven world championship titles in three different sports, 21 Olympic and world championship medals and 100-plus medals in World Cup and Pan-American competitions.”
So no question Dr. DeWeese and his staff, putting in some of the cutting edge training techniques they have learned over the years, could help the performance of some players on game day. Not saying Galac didn’t help player performance, just saying that DeWeese and company bringing in some of their ideas, could help players in different ways than the old stuff.
And Robert Saleh is entitled to have his own conditioning staff, and he wanted this group.
But don’t expect blown out knees, torn labrums, and broken legs/ribs to go away.
Those things happen in football, regardless of the who is the running the strength and conditioning department.
March 12, 2021
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