Maybe All The Dallas Cowboys Need Is Some Duct Tape
A long time ago back in my high school, far from Dallas and Valley Ranch, our football team had a trainer. He doubled as the Strength and Conditioning coach, volunteering his time (we were a very small school, my guidance counselor was the Head coach). I’m not sure what qualifications he had as a trainer, but no matter if players suffered from jammed fingers or sprained knees or ankles, the ‘repair’ was always the same – Duct tape.
Granted, most of our injuries were overblown because we thought we looked cool and tough wrapped up, but looking back some of those ankle rolls probably deserved more attention. Regardless, our hard as nails trainer that used to randomly stop guys in the locker room to punch him as hard as they could in the stomach or arm, walked around the locker room before games carrying several rolls of duct tape and bandage wraps asking who needed to be taped. “Tape up kids so you don’t injury yourselves worse“, he used to yell. Many of us lined up to be Duct taped. Why?, well this guy was a real gung ho guy who looked like Jack La Lane and had supposedly worked for the Pittsburgh Steelers or something like that. As I recall, though, his day job was dressing as a referee in a local sporting goods store. I don’t know if he owned it or just worked there. Our coaches acted like we were lucky to have him, so we lined up.
Every week our team would jog onto the sideline before each game, half of us needlessly wrapped up like wounded warriors refusing to give up the fight. Looking back, we lost a lot of games and looked like idiots. One thing though, few if any of our players suffered high ankle sprains like Cowboys nose tackle Jay Ratliff or hamstring injuries like linebacker DeMarcus Ware and wide receiver Miles Austin. None of the taped up kids did.
Because of this summer’s training camp and pre season, the Dallas Cowboys have been labelled a ‘hard luck’ team for experiencing an unusually high number of injuries, especially to key players. Supposedly, the new Strength and Conditioning coach, Mike Woicik, which was the Cowboys old S & C coach in the 90’s, was coming in to improve the strength and conditioning of the Cowboys players. That hasn’t worked out so well. If the Cowboys run out of things to do to cure the team of their injury misfortunes, I offer this: Maybe they should take a page out of my high school trainer’s book and start Duct taping everybody. Just a Suggestion.
Points and Observations:
-I hate to think I was wrong about Matt Johnson and Danny Coale. Neither one got a chance to show what they can do because they didn’t use Duct tape, and now I’m not sure they even make the team
-How old are we getting? A Dallas sports writer referred to Cowboys QB Tony Romo as ‘grizzled’ this past week. ‘Grizzled?!’ That’s what they were calling Oakland Raider’s QB Ken Stabler years ago, and more recently, Brett Favre. Romo doesn’t even have gray hair yet!
-Team owner, Jerry Jones undermined his Head coach, Jason Garrett a little bit when he proclaimed (or should I say, ‘pre’claimed) Felix Jones was a roster lock. I was hoping Jerry would stop doing that with Garrett, but he just can’t help himself.
-I hope running back Phillip Tanner keeps his spot on the roster. He won’t make it through waivers and I like this kid, but Jamize Olawale made the most of his opportunity while Tanner was injured.
-If wide receiver Dwayne Harris makes the 53 , which seems likely, let me be the first to offer the nickname ‘The Predator’ with those locks.
Artie Cappello