In 2015, Robert Saleh was the Jaguars\u2019 linebackers coach when they used the No. 3 overall pick in the draft on pass rusher Dante Fowler. During the first drill of Fowler\u2019s first minicamp practice in the NFL, he tore his ACL, ending his rookie season before it began. Saleh hasn\u2019t forgotten.<\/p>\n
Saleh, now the head coach of the Titans, said today that he takes it very easy on drafted players at rookie minicamps because he knows that the draft process is long and requires flying all over the country to get poked and prodded by NFL teams. So while the undrafted rookies who didn\u2019t do a lot of pre-draft visits will be on the practice field, the drafted players will be working with the strength and conditioning coaches to see where their bodies are after all that pre-draft work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they\u2019re going through the draft prospects, they\u2019ve been through a lot of traveling,\u201d Saleh said. \u201cSo over the weekend, with our draft picks, we\u2019re going to be doing more baseline checking with them. So they\u2019ll be with the strength and conditioning coaches. They\u2019re meeting with all of us throughout the day, but as far as practice goes they\u2019ll be with the strength and conditioning staff, creating a baseline to see where they\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saleh said he still thinks about Fowler\u2019s injury and how to prevent anything like that from happening again.<\/p>\n
\u201cCall it a scar. I was on the staff that saw Dante Fowler tear his ACL on the first rep of rookie minicamp,\u201d Saleh said. \u201cSo I\u2019ve just taken the philosophy of these guys have had a lot of stress over the last month. Their bodies aren\u2019t ready for football, so we\u2019re trying to see where they\u2019re at so we can get them properly acclimated when they\u2019re here with the veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2015, Robert Saleh was the Jaguars\u2019 linebackers coach when they used the No. 3 overall pick in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-618626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}