AU FOOTBALL 12 to 1: Can the Tigers stay healthy?

Editor’s Note: As a daily running feature, Auburn beat reporter Andrew Gribble will pose a question surrounding the Auburn football team as it heads into fall practice, which kicks off Wednesday. He’ll do the best he can to predict an outcome, though he does not vouch for his accuracy.

How do the depth-deprived Tigers avoid injuries?

Really, this is an unanswerable question.

It’s like predicting when a car accident will occur or whether or not it will rain on a given August day in Alabama.

Nevertheless, there are strategies that Auburn will utilize in hopes of preventing what may still be the inevitable.

No coach will be focused more on this task than offensive line coach Jeff Grimes.

If Grimes loses one of his starters to a serious injury, the Tigers will be in a world of hurt. Excluding potential incoming freshman Aubrey Phillips, whose status is still in limbo following his transfer from Florida State, Grimes has exactly five backup scholarship linemen. Two of those (Andre
Harris and John Sullen) are true freshmen and none have much game experience.

Grimes, who admittedly ran his players through a physical punishing this spring, said in June that fall practice will be significantly different. He realizes what’s at stake.

“You can still be competitive and you can still work hard, but maybe gear things away from as much situations where they might get hurt,” Grimes told the Opelika-Auburn News in June. “For example, instead of a full team drill, you might choose an inside running drill. Maybe you do five more minutes of that and less full team.

“The fewer bodies you have around, the less opportunity you have in guys running into each other.

“We want to hit, we want to go hard, but we’ve got to be smart about it, too.”

The Tigers saw numerous players go down this spring, including quarterback Barrett Trotter (ACL) for the season, and have likely lost cornerback Aairon Savage (Achilles) for the season and wide receiver Tim Hawthorne (ankle) for the bulk of fall practice after injuries suffered during summer workouts.

Chizik broached the subject at SEC Media Days. He hinted that two-a-days might not resemble the rough-and-tumble, sweat-fests of the past.

OK, the players will probably still sweat a lot. But it will be after a “smarter” use of time.

“We don’t have a very deep football team,” Chizik said. “Obviously, you want to keep a physical mentality, but you also have to be very smart on your approach. We’ll do that. We know that we’ve got to take our best players into the game on Sept. 5 and we have to have a fresh football team.
That’s our goal.”

It’s easier said than done, of course, but it appears Chizik and Co. will be erring on the side of caution from the start.

Even though it probably won’t prevent random chance.

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