Preparing for injuries part of special teams coaching
Last week’s game took a turn on the first offensive play, when wide receiver David Moore was lost to an elbow injury that landed him on IR. Not that Moore was scheduled to be a big part of special teams that day (most key starters aren’t), but his replacement on offense, Brycen Tremayne, was.
So when the punt team loses one of its gunners that early, and then the other one when receiver Dalevon Campbell was hurt in the second quarter, there’s a cascade of adjustments that have to be made.
Special teams coordinator Tracy Smith handles this with a shrug, mostly, since he knows it’s part of his weekly routine. So when asked if this recent batch of injuries was more than normal, he didn’t have an answer at hand.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “It just goes around that I deal with those one at a time as they show up, no historical record of what that is,” Smith said. “And it doesn’t matter really, you know, at the end of it, if you had to replace them all or everybody played right through, you still have to go get the ball down when you’re covering, and you have to take it as far as you can when you’re returning.”