Gamecocks beset by injuries yet again. How USC evaluates its issues there
This season, as with last season, South Carolina’s football team has been beset by injuries.
A rough list of players hurt at the moment runs at least 15 guys long. That’s a year after the team suffered 14 season-ending surgeries.
That number is stark and, according to football coach Will Muschamp, unusual. But it didn’t lead to a large-scale change in the team’s conditioning program under Jeff Dillman through the offseason.
“We evaluate every year,” Muschamp said. “As far as what we’re doing in the offseason program, and there’s adjustments made as far as, we didn’t have any soft tissue issues last year. We didn’t have any.
“So there wasn’t anything from a training standpoint that we felt like we, there was tweaks and things, but overall changing things, we didn’t have to change a lot of anything.”
The reason for this comes down to the point of the training program and what it can accomplish.
Simply put, one cannot train a bone to get stronger nor a knee to react better when torqued in an unnatural way. Football is a violent game with collisions on every play and players falling on each other often. The game damages the human body.
So the focus is those soft tissue questions, which are usually hamstrings issues. Those dogged the likes of Deebo Samuel and Rico Dowdle at times and are often linked to training and lifestyle.
Last season, only safety Jaylen Dickerson dealt with that. At the moment, receivers Shi Smith and Chavis Dawkins are having hamstring issues, as is running back A.J. Turner. Quarterback Dakereon Joyner also had a hamstring issue that cost him more than a month.
USC currently has six players who project to be done for the year with an ACL, two Lisfranc foot fractures, a hip bone issue, a broken hand and an undisclosed ankle issue. The Gamecocks are up to at least 85 games missed because of injuries.
Muschamp also said he believes his team is “comparable” to other SEC squads in how much strain it is putting on players.
“You’re constantly evaluating,” Muschamp said. “We’ve got the Catapult system as far as the number of you know, mileage that we’re having during games and mileage we’re having during practices. Very comparable to people in our league that use a catapult system the were able to access that information.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2019 at 8:24 AM with the headline "Gamecocks beset by injuries yet again. How USC evaluates its issues there."
