NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Spend 90 minutes with Steve Watterson, the former longtime Titans’ strength and conditioning coach, as Jonathan Hutton and I were fortunate enough to do on Friday’s edition of The Midday 180, and you’ll get stories of pranks and players, injuries and ownership and much more.
Right off the top, I was struck by how much he said he felt responsible for injuries during his time with the team. As I’ve said time and time again, which there are things a team can do to reduce injuries and things it can fail to do that might increase them, Mike Vrabel is entirely correct when he says the injury rate in the NFL is 100 percent. Luck is certainly also a huge factor.
“I would say all of it (is connected to me), that’s how I felt,” Watterson said. “Every time a guy got injured, it was a heart attack and I would stay late at night and call peers around the league and find out, ‘What are you doing, what’s different, how are you handling a situation?’
“Another time, believe me I’m not exonerating myself, I’m just giving you an example that sometimes the fans don’t see. Let’s take a look at the year (2017) that Marcus had a hamstring, (Corey) Davis had a hamstring and (Tajae) Sharpe had a hamstring issue, oh and DeMarco (Murray). One of the variables out of that is, that entire offseason, they didn’t work out with me one day. Davis came in with an injury, a foot injury. He was limited in what he could do in conditioning. If you remember DeMarco had toe surgery, hand surgery. [Unlocked]
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