Barry Odom and the Mizzou defense are adopting safer, rugby-style tackle techniques

Heads up!

Pretty cool pre-scrimmage story from Matter here.

Post-Dispatch: Heads up! Teams focus on safe tackling

"It’s the same drills we’ve always done, just with a focus and message we’re sending the kids about exactly where they put their body," said [Rob] Droege, who also teaches at Lindbergh High and coaches at Kirkwood High. "You’re using the front of the shoulder for contact and not the top of the shoulder, so the head doesn’t come down." [...]

Droege’s alma mater has installed a new tackling technique, too. A few years ago, while coaching at Memphis, first-year Mizzou defensive coordinator Barry Odom began teaching a rugby-style tackling philosophy popularized by the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. In 2011, Seattle coach Pete Carroll and Rocky Seto, his longtime assistant, began working with rugby legend Waisale Serevi and his Seattle-based consulting company, ATAVUS Football, to come up with innovative tackling concepts that take the head out of collisions.

Borrowing concepts from rugby, the Seahawks teach defenders different forms of shoulder-leverage tackling based on core principles like "eyes through the thighs" and "wrap and squeeze." The rugby tackle differs from the Heads Up teachings, though Rex Norris Jr., who runs ATAVUS’ football division, believes the rugby tackle is fit for all ages.

Last summer, SB Nation's Field Gulls wrote a nice post detailing some of the methods Carroll was teaching.

"It gave the answer," [John] Madden said. "OK, we take the head out and you put the shoulder and the arms and the techniques and the drills in. Everything Pete has there provides the answers that are perfect.

"It was great for him to do that, to give back. And I think it gives the answers that we need. If we're going to do some of these things the Commissioners has asked us to do, we need these answers."

Said Pete Carroll: "There's so much talk around the league and around the game of football right now, that I wanted to see if we could contribute to helping people understand how you could play this game and do it in a great fashion and continue to promote the game," said Carroll, who was assisted in the video project by defensive passing game coordinator Rocky Seto.

"This is a concept we've been working with for a long time and something that's built into our makeup. But we just thought it would be worth sharing, and really hoping that it works its way through high school football and youth football to teach kids at an early age how to tackle and how to take care of themselves and play this game really fast and hard in absolutely the safest way possible."

This is one area where the game has needed to evolve for a while, and it's pretty cool to watch the answers evolve. Hopefully they succeed in the way they're intended to succeed.

What's On

ABC-17 with a couple of fun post-scrimmage segments.

And I do love that "You got burned by Chase Daniel" has become part of Ryan Walters' set rësumë here. Pretty funny.

A few more scrimmage links

PowerMizzou: POST SCRIPT: SCRIMMAGE 1

Based on rudimentary research on MUTigers.com, it looks like yesterday’s passing performance was Missouri’s best in a season since fall camp 2013. On Aug. 10, 2013, the quarterbacks combined for a 50-88, 672-yards, 3 TD-3 INT stat line. A few days later, in the same camp, the quarterbacks went 48-for-74 for 560 yards, nine touchdowns and three interceptions.

On Saturday, they threw for 652 yards and five touchdowns on 52-85 passing. It was the first scrimmage without an interception since last Aug. 21, 2014.

I think just about any comparison you can make to 2013 is one we're comfortable with.

The Trib: Penalties plague Tigers' O-line in 1st scrimmage

"Way too many self-inflicted mistakes. Almost unbelievable how many times we had false starts and procedure penalties and stuff like that," Henson said. "So that’s on us as a coaching staff. We’ve got to coach it better and get it cleaned up. I mean, we made some big plays, we hit some things, we made some plays. I wasn’t totally disappointed in that. I think our defense is really good, but when we’ve got chances to execute and we’ve got the right play on against the right look, we’re just not executing, not consistently enough. I was just very frustrated.

"I felt at the end of the scrimmage we got going. That’s kind of like how we played last year in games — the whole first half, whatever, then in the second half we’d play pretty well."

MUtigers.com: #MIZCamp - Scrimmage No. 1 - Aug. 15

Also: DISRESPECT
The Trib: MU football gets a tepid but honest assessment, without the snark

WHATNOT

Volleyball around the corner!
MUtigers.com: Mizzou Volleyball Opens Season With Black & Gold Next Thursday
The Trib: MU volleyball seeks more production from sophomores Reuter, Deeken

Although Deeken and Reuter came to MU with athleticism in spades, they lacked polish on the volleyball court.

"Their ceiling is much higher, but it’s also going to take a little bit longer to get there," Kreklow said.

Reuter started to get there toward the end of last season. She attacked at a .202 clip overall, but her hitting percentage was .285 in Missouri’s final six matches. Included in that stretch was her 15-kill, 12-dig performance against Mississippi, a match in which she had a .609 hitting percentage.

Another decent soccer exhibition result
MUtigers.com: Mizzou Closes Exhibition Action with 1-1 Tie Against Arkansas
MUtigers.com: Four Tigers Named to SEC Watch List

Yeah, incentives might not be the worst idea
MUtigers.com: Men's Basketball Season Ticket Renewal Incentives Announced

Volunteer assistants are the best kind of assistants!
MUtigers.com: Mizzou Baseball Adds J.C. Field as Volunteer Assistant

At some point, we should maybe walk through some of these new hires
MUtigers.com: White Named Senior Associate A.D. for Development