Should Starters Play in Pre-Season?

Should Starters Play in Pre-Season?
By Jake Bailey, TheSportsStand.com (8/19/07)

It's been a long debated topic for many teams. Should the starters play in the pre-season? If so, how long? It is a very important decision that all coaches should make. There are pros and cons to letting the starters play, and many consider it a risky move.

The off-season is a pretty long time, and players need to get ready for the regular season. They need to see somebody going at them full-speed. They need to get used to the game-speed. If they don't, their early regular season performance could suffer. It helps players form chemistry with new players. It helps the timing of all the players, reaction times, and wakes up their long awaited urge to play some football. It helps the coaches evaluate young players, and pre-season play is often the difference between getting cut or getting a job and keeping a job or losing it.

Seems all good right? Well in the land of fairy tales it's great, but there's a problem. It may sound odd, but some reasons it can be bad, are the same reasons why it is positive. It is a real game. It is a full-speed game. And with that, comes the risk of serious injury. These injuries often cripple a team's season and can cause many negative things to happen. Teams with such high hopes could have them crushed. A player's career could be ruined on a game that doesn't count. Some examples of this was a few years ago, when Michael Vick suffered a serious knee injury. More recently (just this past week), Redskins fans got a huge scare when starter Jason Campbell suffered what appeared to be a serious injury. Broncos DE Ebenezer Ekuban lost his season to a torn achilles tendon, while Broncos fans got another scare when Travis Henry hurt his knee. It appeared serious but turned out to be a minor one.

So should they play? I think that it depends on each individual player's situation. If players have been on the team for a while, maybe a few per game. If a player needs to get back to speed/recover from an injury, maybe a quarter at the most. If it is a competition for the job, I'd probably say give them both time with the first team, and let them play longer. The negative to this is, it puts the rest of the players at risk. Sometimes there's new coaches and there's new systems. In that case, players will need to get used to it more in game-time situations. I still think that playing time should remain maybe a quarter at the most. To me, it's all about limiting time so you can minimize the risk of injury. No matter what happens, the only way to prevent injury on the field is to keep players off the field. I say minimize it, and preserve your season. It also keeps your starters a little more rested in the long run too maybe. Why put them at unnecessary risk?

Players also should realize that giving 100% instead of 120% is fine in the pre-season. Instead of fighting for that extra yard, just go down. If you're a QB and see a big d-lineman coming at you, just go down. If you're a RB and see a big LB coming at you, step out of bounds. Preserve your body for the regular season. Once you're in the regular season, give that 120%. That is when it counts.

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