USA Football puts focus on safety

INDIANAPOLIS -- Class is in session in the new school of football. The focus is on teaching kids a safer way to tackle, easing the fears of parents alarmed enough about concussions to ask whether their sons should play at all and ensuring a now-thriving game has a future.

The faculty began taking shape here over the weekend. It includes Chuck Kyle, who in 30 seasons as coach at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland has won 11 Ohio state titles and twice been named USA TODAY's National High School Coach of the Year.

"All of us feel that football is under attack a little bit right now with the concussion situation," says Kyle. "It's a game we all love, and I think there are a lot of coaches that say we're not going to stand back. We're going to fix it. We want to make sure that parents feel safe when they're sending their son to play the game.

'' Kyle was among 19 invitees, most of them current or former high school coaches, who attended a weekend workshop to become "master trainers" in the "Heads Up Football" program being expanded this year by USA Football, a national youth organization based in Indianapolis.

They'll go around the country to run clinics for "player safety coaches," drawn from volunteers in youth football. Last year, USA Football ran pilot programs with safety coaches in three leagues in Virginia, California and Indiana. This year, the organization says it will expand to hundreds of youth organizations.

USA Football is partnered with the NFL and benefits from its largess. Heads Up is an opportunity for the NFL to demonstrate its commitment to safety just as it is being sued by more than 4,000 former players for allegedly failing to protect them from the dangers of concussions.

Scott Hallenbeck, executive director of USA Football, says he doesn't see the NFL being motivated by legal concerns though. "If people consider it self-serving to invest in USA Football, invest in ways to make the game better and safer, then so be it," he says.

Hallenbeck call this year's program a pilot, too, because for 100 youth football organizations taking part it will include a research study of attitudes about football and an injury study. He says about 300 other youth programs already are joining the Heads Up program but will not be included in the studies. Organizations are eligible for the program if all their coaches (including assistants) go through a USA Football online coaching certification at a cost of $5 per coach per year.

Hallenbeck says USA Football has been told by insurance provider AIG that it will discount rates to users of Heads Up. "This to me is one of the best endorsements we have. ... The insurance industry, they speak from the wallet," says Hallenbeck.

USA Football estimates there are about 3 million youth football players and 400,000 coaches nationwide. Pop Warner says it had about 275,000 players last season, and its executive director, Jon Butler, says that's about "about flat" from the previous year. Hallenbeck says there was a decline in youth participation nationally in the past year. "Youth football dropped for the first time by 6%," Hallenbeck told trainees. "Parents are very concerned.''

'Guardians of the game'

Patrick Kersey, medical director for USA Football and former team doctor with the Indianapolis Colts, addressed the trainees. While noting that cycling is the leading cause of concussions around the world, he acknowledged there is a focus on football because of the high visibility of the NFL.

"We are the guardians of the game. … We're evolving. We have to evolve. If we don't, we are going to be yesterday's news," says Kersey, who has twin 7-year-old sons who play football.

The trainees got instruction on how to properly fit helmets and shoulder pads. Shoulder pads are key because USA Football wants them to be the primary striking point.

Another segment was devoted to recognizing signs of concussion and making sure a player gets clearance from a medical professional (versed in concussion treatment) before returning to play.

The trainees did role playing. In one exercise, a participant portrayed a high school assistant coach lobbying at halftime to keep his playing son, Bobby, in the game even though he might have had a concussion. "He stayed awake," says Bobby's dad. However, you needn't be knocked out to be concussed.

But concussions aren't always immediately apparent. Steve Specht, coach at St. Xavier High in Cincinnati and recent winner of the Don Shula NFL High School Coach of the Year award, recounted how he had a top receiver who had a great game and displayed no signs of concussion.

Yet when Specht spoke to the player after the game, the player said, "Pleased to meet you." Specht said he was out the next three weeks with a concussion.

"It's some amazing how the body works, adrenalin, pressure, excitement, all of those things can sometimes mask some pieces of evaluating tools," said Kersey. "It may not have been a big deal until he slowed down. Sometimes, it's immediate. That's the one that we don't understand."

Rip vs. wrap

At the core of Heads Up is a style of tackling designed to take the head out of the equation for the tackler and player being tackled.

Andy Ryland, USA Football's manager of football development and former Penn State linebacker, used videos and personal demonstrations to show the trainees how to teach the tackling basics.

Ryland says phrases such as "bite the ball" (ram your face into the ball when hitting a runner) and "ear-holing" (smacking your helmet into a foe's earhole) are no longer acceptable. USA Football stresses keeping the head to the side while launching up and into the ball carrier and striking him with the front of the shoulders.

Ryland says another outdated maxim is "nose to the numbers." The idea used to be that if you kept your head up, you wouldn't break your neck. "Until they heard about that whole concussion part because like your brain is attached to your face," Ryland says.

One element of the USA Football tackling style may give coaches pause. It advises against wrapping the arms around the ball carrier. Instead, it wants tacklers to "rip" both arms upward in a double upper cut motion and grab the back of the jersey. The theory is when you wrap the arms, the head goes down and puts the head and neck at risk.

Gabe Infante, coach at St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia, says he likes the rip move because he's seen shoulder injuries such as torn labrums caused by wrapping the arms. "When the arms come away from the body, it works against your shoulder," Infante says.

Aaron Brady, coach at Gonzaga College Prep in Washington, D.C., says his school already does many of the tackling drills suggested by USA Football, which include non-contact work on the set-up and upward explosion from the hips required to tackle. But he says the rip is a challenge: "It's hard to teach kids to do that."

Kyle says his drills at St. Ignatius are similar to USA Football's. "We hardly have any live tackling drills," he says. "Short range, not much run-up to make the tackle. If we do something like the secondary to come up and break down for a tackle, we emphasize really almost a touch tackle."

Kyle took the podium to speak to his fellow participants. He discussed a newspaper article from 1905 he had found which called the brutality of the game and a string of fatalities "the death harvest." He says football responded then with safety measures.

"In a way, we kind of face that again today," Kyle says. "We have to realize that's it's under attack. … I look at it this way, fellas, we are going to take a leadership role."

Tweets and teach

The trainees also got a tutorial in the use of Twitter and other social media to further the cause. Twitter was new to most, but they know coaching and coach-to-coach communication.

They will conduct their clinics from April through July with aspiring safety coaches. For their efforts, they will receive stipends and expenses from USA Football.

Kyle says the motivation is belief in football. "If I sound patriotic a little bit, this is American football. … This our game," he says.

Participant Buddy Curry, former Atlanta Falcons linebacker, says the challenge ahead will be to get coaches young and old to buy into Heads Up. "You need to get the new ones coming in to really focus on what's important. It's safety No.1." says Curry. "You have to talk to the older coaches and say, 'This is how it used to be done. … We have to change and we have to focus on the safety."

Sunday's training moved from the USA Football's offices to an indoor facility at St. Vincent Sports Performance. Instead of putting kids through the paces in tackling drills, the training participants did the drills themselves. One would act as the coach and instruct other as they ran between cones and collided with an assortment of pads.

"So we all get to laugh at each other," Ryland said at the start.

But the participants attacked it like the football guys they are. They didn't wear shoulder pads or helmets, but the techniques can be practiced without them because they're all about footwork, body angles and not using the head as the point of contact.

Kyle, from his knees, lunged forward over a pad with his arms coming forward to practice the hi-powered, upward "shoot" of making a tackle. He kidded afterward that he has a one-inch vertical leap.

"If I were 12 years old, I think it would have been more fun. But I'm 62 years old and I have certain parts of my body that remind me of that," says Kyle.

He said doing the drills will help him.

"We don't look like we're ready for August double sessions, but I think we all learned some of the frustrations maybe the kids will have," said Kyle. "I'm sure later on I'm going to be aching a little bit, but it was really a learning experience, and I think that will help us be better teachers."

This article is sourced by Gary Mihoces, USA Today Sports.