Injuries, still and always, part of the game

Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Alan Williams devoted part of morning press conference to injuries on Monday. Not injuries to any specific players but how the organization and players should deal with them.

Coaching staffs tend to be fairly closed-mouth when it comes to injured players. Part of that is because they want to respect the player's privacy and another part is because they don't want to tip off the opposition about who may or may not play in the upcoming game.

Williams says young players coming into the league need to do two things. The first is to become more familiar with how their own bodies react to an injury.

"They need to get to know their bodies better," he said. "And once they do that they need to be able to communicate that to the coaches and trainers."

Williams says it's important piece of information for both the coaches and players to have -- not just in practice but particularly in games. If a player tells a coach during a game that he's ready to go in and do the job, and then he aggravates an injury he has and is unable to continue, that can jeopardize the team's chances of winning.

The second thing Williams talked about was young players learning how to practice when they're not 100 percent. If they're not feeling right or have tightness somewhere they need to adjust how they're going to practice accordingly.

There's a fine line between just sucking it up, going out to the practice field and playing with pain and going out when your hurt and making an injury worse. The quicker the players learn the difference, the better they'll be able to contribute.