The CFL season is not even a week old and injuries to quarterbacks is the main storyline following the first slew of games this past weekend. Ricky Ray, Darian Durant, Mike Reilly, Jon Crompton and Dan LeFevour are all already sidelined with injuries. Most of these injuries were avoidable.
How do we fix it? By making the training camps longer.
CFL Training Camps Are Too Short
What no one seems to be looking at is how short the training camps are. This season, the Alouettes held their mini-camp in Florida from April 15 to 17 and dropped on-field activities until nearly a month and a half later. The team held their rookie camp from May 28 to May 30 at Bishop’s University and started their training camp the day after it ended. League-wide, training camps only started on May 31, just 25 days before the season kicked off in Montreal.
Training camps last less than four weeks in the CFL and teams only get a chance to warm up their skills and bodies in two pre-season games. Compare this to the NFL, where teams start Organized Team Activities around the same time that the CFL opened their camps. NFL teams continue on-field activities right through the summer until they start their season in early September. And NFL teams play only 16 games in 17 weeks, versus the 18 games in 20 weeks up in the three-down league.
The Alouettes’ neighbours, the Montreal Impact, also hold long training camps. They usually open their camps in mid-January and begin play in early March, giving them a six-week cushion to beef up and get their bodies prepared for the rigorous season. Many European soccer clubs also start practising in time for pre-season games in late July before kicking off their seasons in early September, also a training camp length of about six weeks. Soccer is a lot less physical than football and it leaves us to wonder why medical logic is thrown out the window when setting dates for training camps in the CFL.
There’s no legitimate reason why CFL training camps are so short, no reasons to why teams don’t give their players enough time to prepare. And it can have a disastrous effect on them, as we saw in week one.
The Numerous Injuries to Quarterbacks
Of the nine number one starters on their respective teams in the CFL, four of them are hurt, as well as a few back-ups. Only Drew Willy, Travis Lulay, Henry Burris, Zach Collaros, and Bo-Levi Mitchell are the only ones left standing and playing football, while Ray, Crompton, Reilly, and Durant are all out with injuries. Backups Tanner Marsh and LeFevour are also sidelined long-term.
These injuries to quarterbacks could have all been more or less avoidable with a longer training camp. The lone exception is Ray, whose wear-and-tear from 2014, combined with his 35 years of age, forced him to go under the knife. Durant’s injury was a freak accident that can happen to anybody, but Crompton, LeFevour, and Reilly all went down with contact.
With a longer training camp, the quarterbacks would have extra time to get their bodies back in shape and take more contact before the real games begin. In LeFevour’s case, he only had one pre-season game under his belt before coming in relief for Crompton. He was coming off an ACL tear from last season and missed the start of camp.
The quarterbacks’ equipment can also share some blame for these injuries. Crompton and LeFevour both sustained serious shoulder injuries, playing on the same team in the same game. Lulay ruined his shoulder last season and Ray had surgery on his shoulder this year. Is the equipment used in the CFL not protective enough? Should Jeffrey Orridge call for tests on the shoulder pads, and possibly mandate proper protection before more QBs drop?
Training camp gives all the players an opportunity to get their bodies game ready, and that includes getting the ready for contact. Sometimes, it makes the matter worse as we saw with Ray. He was expected to be ready for the season but suffered a setback in training camp.
In other cases, Crompton, LeFevour, and Reilly all needed to take more hits in the spring; the result is shorter summers for all of them, as they will spend the season in the medical room recovering from their ailments.
The Cost of Injuries
This many injuries to starting quarterbacks is much rarer in the NFL (Sam Bradford notwithstanding). Our American friends down South might turn away from our league when second and third string quarterbacks are starting regularly. The game becomes less exciting and not as many points are scored when the top offensive guns are not playing.
In order for these injuries to quarterbacks, or any other player in that matter, to stop happening so early on in the season, the league needs to push training camp back at least a month, into mid-to-late April. This way, players’ bodies can adjust to game speed in a less accelerated manner and won’t be on the sidelines so early on in the season. Until then, fans will have to enjoy the league without some of its biggest names.
