C. Long's leg has atrophy?
J Long and Bradford retear ACLs
Players are dropping like flies every week
Is there a connection to the strength and condition trainers and doctors on staff with the Rams? I don't know anything about them but it sure seems like this has been a problem at Rams park for a while.
Yes there is.
Most professional sports franchises have a Head Strength & Conditioning Coach along with a few assistants and interns. They also have a Head Trainer (along with with assistants) and they have a team doc.
S&C coaches work closely with trainers and trainers discuss with doctors injuries etc. However, players can always seek other opinions or doctors at anytime.
I spent a few years on a professional franchise as a strength and conditioning coach/intern and then spent 10+years in the private industry working with collegiate and professional athletes.
Here is the thing many fans fail to recognize...... A majority of professional athletes spend the entire off-season with private S&C coaches at private facilities across the nation. Anyone can open a facility and "train" a professional athlete. I have seen and heard first hand some horror stories of athletes in the off-season. Some guys train with friends and some even family. The head S&C coaches do not have a say who they work with. Some athletes choose to take a program from the Head S&C coach and follow it on their own, but many head in their own direction and some probably do little to no work in the off-season.
Athletes make their gains in the off-season then they report to camp. At camp the S&C coaches do not have a ton of time to produce significant gains. They help to maintain strength, improve stability, mobility, flexibility, and maintenance etc. (or whatever their individual believes/philosophies are). So whatever that athlete did in the off-season is what they come to camp with. Whether it is a big weight loss like Brockers (I am not for sure if Brockers trained with the Rams staff in the off-season or not) or strength gains like S-Jax use to have (he worked at a private facility in the Stl suburbs), the head S&C does not have much to say about it in the off-season. I worked for an NBA franchise and in the off-season we had 4-5 guys train with the our staff. The other 15 or so guys went off on their own. Then they would return for the season.
Then if a rash of injuries crop up during the season, the S&C or training staff usually gets the blame.
Sometimes injuries are fluke injuries (Long got rolled up, concussions are not avoidable and you see many ankle contact injuries, etc), and sometimes athletes have more lax joints that lead to being injury prone. Explosive athletes are also prone to injury. It really is a mixed bag. And some seasons you just run into injuries.
As a staff, we would always sit down at the end of the year and look at the injuries that occurred during the year and discussed if there was something we were missing or something we could do to prevent further injuries in the future. I know for a fact the Rams also work closely with Gatorade on nutritional components as well. Gatorade has a consultant that visits them with the latest studies and information and works directly with the trainers.
These injuries have nothing to do with the staff IMO. From the little I know about them, they are great at what they do.