In a normal year, Friday would have been a recovery day from the Lions first preseason game. Alas, the exhibition season was canceled and the players are still waiting to get into full pads for a full-speed practice.
One of the big issues that comes from not having preseason is tackling. Players won’t get chances to hit opponents at full speed, and tackling teammates in practice is simultaneously not the same and a little dangerous on the injury front. It’s a difficult quandary, one that Lions coach Matt Patricia is acutely aware of.
Coach Patricia discussed the tackling, or lack thereof, in his Zoom with reporters on Friday.
“That’s one of the biggest issues we have right now is just trying to get those tackling fundamentals full-speed and live,” Patricia said. “We do kind of mix in some live periods when we get to training camp, certainly down on the goal line. We usually do that relatively quick.”
Patricia continued,
“One of the things we have had to evaluate is: We’re going to need to tackle somebody before we get to that first game. You need to feel it; you need to see it; you need the see the speed of it. The question is: How do we do that in a safe environment?”
He then discussed how he feels the Lions can simulate and practice game-speed tackling during training camp reps.
“I think for us, it’s putting them in, we call it in-line situations, where maybe they collision and the contact isn’t as great, and it’s a little bit of a safer play and try to eliminate some of the more space and speed type of plays. But they still need to feel that; they need to be able to drive through and just get that out of the way, and do it also in a point in camp where we’ve had enough practice where we feel comfortable doing that safely and everybody’s operating at a high level in equipment, and also far enough away from the first game where you have enough time to recover from that standpoint. The tackling is a big one, absolutely.”
Padded practices, and presumably some tackling, begin Monday in Allen Pakr.