How much does it help to hold back injury information. We asked SEC football coaches
In the weeks leading up to South Carolina’s in-state game with Clemson last year, Gamecocks coach Will Muschamp insisted that star wide receiver Bryan Edwards was on the mend.
A knee issue had bothered him for a while. It sidelined him the previous game and required a scope during the two-week break between games. But up until kickoff, there was some level of implication that Edwards would give it a go.
He didn’t, and after the game, Muschamp fessed up when asked how close Edwards was to playing.
“Not as close as I maybe let on to be,” Muschamp said.
This is perhaps the most direct example of a habit Muschamp has had through much of his tenure, especially the past two-plus seasons. When he shares injury information, he tends to paint a rosier picture than what usually comes together on game day. At a point, it became a running joke among some in the fanbase to predict that any player described as “questionable” wasn’t going to play (and it usually was a good rule of thumb).
Then a few weeks into this season, Muschamp said he was not going to discuss injuries, in part, he said, out of concern it would allow outsiders to deduce if someone had COVID-19. (That same week, two notable players missed the game, leading to speculation about positive tests and such.) Since then, he’s mostly opened back up about some injuries.
To be clear, no coach is obligated to reveal injuries. Comments about how HIPAA factors in are almost assuredly overblown, but if a coach doesn’t ever want to talk about them, that’s their business.
The benefits to revealing them are mostly on the PR front. Fans generally seem to get irked when Saturday morning rolls around and a player they thought would play does not. And injury information often leaks out regardless, whether by media report or message board chatter, meaning the coach not talking about injuries has taken whatever voice he had out of the conversation.
The benefits to holding back on such information seem a bit hard to pin down, though coaches seem to feel there’s some edge to holding back, possibly to make opponents have to expend more energy in prep work. (When South Carolina played Vanderbilt, it installed different tweaks for a trio of quarterbacks with different skillsets despite none of them being particularly good.)
The logic is slightly dubious because a backup should by nature be worse than a starter. Asked about the challenge of preparing for an unknown quarterback situation last week, Muschamp said that factors into prep to a degree, but a staff is always planning for all situations.
“You got to be prepared for everything,” Muschamp said. “You can’t put all your eggs in one basket and hope it happens. So you’ve got to be prepared for, for whatever may happen on game day.”
Linebacker Brad Johnson added: “I don’t think it will change anything for us as a defense. We’re kind of prepared for whoever plays out there.”
Ultimately LSU coach Ed Orgeron revealed his starter was likely out to start of the week and named a replacement Thursday evening. Even with the advanced warning, South Carolina’s defense did not force a punt in a blowout loss.
Muschamp’s gambit of not letting on how hurt Edwards was for the Clemson game ended with the Gamecocks offense scoring three points and putting up 174 total yards.
Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz seemed to subscribe to the “make them work more” theory this year when he declined to name a starting quarterback so Alabama had to prepare for all options. His starter led the team to three points in the first half and was benched a few drives into the next game.
To get a better sense of what kind of advantage comes in holding back on injuries in such a manner, The State asked every SEC coach but Muschamp if they’d had a moment in their career when a game either was notably more difficult or even lost with the surprise of a missing player being a factor. None could name a specific game, through several said they were sure it had happened at one point. Some suggested the imprecise reporting of injuries might be because of timing (a player isn’t ruled out on a Tuesday when many coaches hold press conferences), though some, such as Muschamp, have radio appearances or interviews late in game weeks, after the most practices are finished.
Below, The State has compiled the answers from the 13 SEC coaches on the subject.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart
“I don’t know a specific time that would’ve happened. I know there’s been several times pregame warmups have occurred and a player was missing, whether due to injury, suspension or whatever reason. It could be injuries, you weren’t aware of it and it might change your game plan and how you played them. And that that has affected, probably many times, where something changed within the game because of injury, or in warm-ups, prior to you finding out.”
Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason
“I really don’t recall any of that. No team is required to report injuries unless they’re season-ending. And so, I mean a guy may not practice for a couple of days and then he winds up playing. What I learned in the NFL, coming back to college, it’s always a sprint to game day, whether it’s a Friday, Saturday or a Sunday. It’s always a sprint to game day, so as a coach you’re just trying to get your best players on the field. And sometimes it is a game-time decision. So, I mean, if coaches are doing that to sort of hide what’s happening, I think most opponents understand that there’s a possibility, but you still got to defend the scheme and understand that if a player is available you’ve got to have a player plan as well.”
Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt
“No, I wouldn’t think so. … I think sometimes (there’s an advantage). There’s obviously different types of injuries and sometimes players can participate in practice and and be close to full speed but maybe on game day, the doctors decide that, you know what, they probably need a couple of more days off. I think everybody’s pretty forthcoming with their injuries. It’s pretty evident with today’s social media, there’s not a lot of secrets, so I would think everybody’s decision on all that is, No. 1, just player safety.”
Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher
“I can’t swear one way or the other for what somebody that did play or didn’t play that I didn’t know about. But I don’t think it significantly made a huge difference in what we did and how we did it, if it felt like it was a disadvantage to our football team. Not that I can think of off the top of my head and I don’t think people try to do it on purpose ... and maybe they do, I don’t know. But I can’t, off the top of my head, I’m not gonna say one way or the other because I could be wrong. There’s a lot of games over a lot of years. … It would have stuck out to me that I thought it cost us games or something like that, I would know. So I can’t think of anything like that.”
Mississippi State coach Mike Leach
“I don’t think so. I don’t reveal injuries, and I don’t feel like, what you said, I know some people can’t wait to get to the microphone to reveal injuries because they want to make sure they have every alibi there is. Oh well. But I don’t reveal few injuries. I can’t think of one, you know. Maybe it’s something like that all of a sudden the quarterback was a runner, or something if you weren’t prepared for it. I don’t really recall one, though to speak of. I think, occasionally there’s somebody that could maybe exploit if you were to know and prepare to, but I’ll tell you the other thing, and then just the nature of coaches and kind of the reality. You know you don’t necessarily trust the information you’re hearing either. Now there’s more. You can verify it more on social media and everything else but you don’t completely trust them either so you’re kind of prepared for the other alternatives as well.”
Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz
“I mean, i think it affects your ability to game-plan specifically for an opponent, if you’re not sure that maybe their best player is out or not yet because it would change the dynamic. Specifically if you knew that we didn’t have our top three interior nose or D linemen, then you’d be more apt to try to game-plan to run the football. So I think that’s why people tend to try to utilize, withhold, not withhold — but not divulging information.”
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin
“I can think of once every two years, you get one in pregame warmups, a freak injury, so but nothing like this COVID where you have no idea. And the problem is the close contacts and how discretionary that is. I highly doubt every program is doing the same thing. So, that part’s kind of discouraging because if people shut down that don’t have it, and we continue to test and they don’t have it, they’re still not allowed to play.”
(The SEC has allowed at least Alabama coach Nick Saban to test his way back onto the field.)
LSU coach Ed Orgeron
“Sometimes that happened. Most of the guys have been honest, but you always got to prepare. A good defensive coordinator is always going to prepare. If this quarterback gets hurt, who is going to go in? What type of quarterback is he, because they (might) change the offense. And then if they do, you’ve got to prepare for two different offenses. So we have done that before, yes.
“I can’t remember (a specific moment) but it’s happened some. I can’t remember the team, but we’ve had to prepare for two quarterbacks, not a bunch, but several times.”
Arkansas coach Sam Pittman
“The first thing about these injuries and in my opinion is, you really don’t know how to answer it because you really don’t know if the kid is going to play or not. I mean, you don’t know how … it’s going to heal. So the answers on the injuries are, I believe they’re honest from all of us coaches. I don’t think we’re holding back anything, I think we just don’t know. We’re not sure. And the next thing, obviously I think every school, we do, check down there to see if this number, that number, who’s this guy, who is playing? So and so is out, so and so is standing over there, whether we knew possibly before the game or not if they were going to be out there. I think it’s really more concerning to the star player, the quarterback, a key D-lineman, something like that that might could change the outcome of a game. But all of us have depth and all of us have good players. So it really hasn’t changed a whole lot about the game.”
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops
“Honestly, I really can’t think of any specific situation like that that jumps out of me. Has it happened? I’m sure it probably has. But, you know, sometimes we have guys that, and I’ve been like this before, where we really don’t know until you get out there and see how he feels. And it comes down to the last-minute decision. Generally speaking, those guys if they try to play, if they’re not questionable or if they didn’t practice that much that week, generally they don’t have much of an impact on the game because they’re just not physically quite at 100% and they haven’t had the reps in practice, and vice-versa. We’ve got games, probably, knowing that certain players were questionable, but I can’t think of anything off the top my head it just jumps out at me.”
Auburn coach Gus Malzahn
“I don’t really know about affecting the game too much because each week you got to be prepared for all the above. Usually in pregame that’s when coaches (are) on the sideline and they’re gathering their information, who’s dressed out, who’s not, where they’re playing him pregame. You’re gathering all that information. A lot of times you got 15 minutes to make adjustments before you go out and play, but it’s not unusual at all to not know if a guy is going to play until you actually get out there and you see him in pregame.
“That’s just part of it for coaches. That’s what we do, to be thinking about the what-ifs. You got to have some different plans. You’ve got to adjust accordingly. But that’s normal for coaches. That’s just kind of what we do.”
Florida coach Dan Mullen
“No. A guy can get hurt the first play of the game. And it’s gonna change the makeup of the game. So I’ve never noticed that. A lot of people get all worked up about that. But these students, there’s the privacy of information of these students and their medical records and their medical history, you know, I don’t think that’s something that always needs to be smeared over publicly all the time. I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure it’s happened, but it’s never too me had an effect on on the game itself.”
Alabama coach Nick Saban
“I think that’s kind of the way the world until you have a rule that sort of makes you sort of divulge what your injury information really is. I mean, there’s no real advantage for any team or any coach to come out say, these guys are in or they’re out, unless it’s a really obvious situation where, you know, a guy’s bad hurt, he’s gonna be out for a long time. So I guess if I had to think about it, I would say yes there’s been times when guys played or didn’t play that we thought would play or wouldn’t play and can’t really know that, and sit here and say that it really impacted the outcome of the game. But sometimes you have to make those adjustments when the time comes and see what happens. So, I think it kind of is what it is right now, and I don’t think it’s an advantage or a disadvantage for anybody.”
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How much does it help to hold back injury information. We asked SEC football coaches."
