What should we make of Seahawks’ coaching moves in strength and conditioning department?
Jan 28, 2019, 11:11 AM | Updated: 11:17 am
The Seahawks parted ways with longtime strength and conditioning coach Chris Carlisle (right). (AP)
(AP)
This Seahawks’ offseason didn’t see anything close to the coaching turnover of last year – when Seattle parted ways with offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, defensive coordinator Kris Richard, and offensive line coach Tom Cable – but the team did make some personnel moves in their strength and conditioning department.
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Brock Huard tried to offer a bit of insight into why those changes might have occurred during his Blue 42 segment of Brock and Salk on 710 ESPN Seattle.
Seattle fired head strength and conditioning coach Chris Carlisle on Jan. 9. The team later parted ways with head trainer Donald Richard, and assistant strength and conditioning coaches Mondray Gee and Jaime Yanchar. All had been with Seattle since the beginning of Carroll’s tenure in 2010. The team has reportedly since hired former UW and USC trainer Ivan Lewis, who has previously trained with quarterback Russell Wilson.
While the reason behind the change isn’t yet known, Huard tried to shed a bit of light on a bigger NFL trend.
“From what I can understand, this is getting a lot more player specific,” Huard said. “More and more, we’re seeing these players that have their own strength coach’s backbone; more and more (you’re seeing relationships like) Tom House and Tom Brady. With the number of people Russell has working with him individually, you assume this is going to be a much bigger group than the group we’ve seen over the last decade, that was there running through really similar routines.
“This is going to be more hands on deck and much more catered to position-specific, even player-specific, needs, because they cannot have the number of injuries they’ve had. They just cannot have the number of pulls and strains and soft-tissue injuries. So this was, I think, really in response to that. It was a move to get very player- and positional-specific to enhance those guys and try to keep them injury-free as much as they possibly can.”
Huard also talked about which WSU Cougar helped (or hurt) himself in the weekend’s Senior Bowl, and what’s keeping the NFL from improving the level of play in the Pro Bowl. You can listen to the full episode of Blue 42 in the audio clip embedded above.
You can hear Huard answer three football questions every weekday morning for Blue 42 at 7:45 a.m. Listen to Brock and Salk Monday-Friday from 7 a.m. – 10 a.m.
