Beware The Nutcracker: Is Singletary's Drill Cause For Alarm?

by Christopher Gates on Jul 3, 2011 12:58 PM CDT in Minnesota Vikings

Mike Singletary was hired this past off-season to be the linebackers coach for the Minnesota Vikings after the former linebackers coach, Fred Pagac, was promoted to the position of defensive coordinator. Singletary was the subject of some controversy during his time in San Francisco, and some more of that controversy surfaced this past week.

Current 49ers center Eric Heitmann will miss the entire 2011 season. . .regardless of when it finally starts. . .with a neck injury. Heitmann claims that the neck injury came about as a result of a drill that Singletary ran at the 49ers practices last season known as "The Nutcracker." What the drill amounts to, basically, is two big guys running into each other and attempting to push each other back.

Here is a video of the drill in question:

To be honest, I don't see anything all that terrible about this. It just seems to me like your standard, run-of-the-mill football drill. My guess is that it probably wouldn't be up to Mike Singletary to run drills like this one during practice anyway, since he's only a position coach at this point.

As I mentioned, Singletary took a lot of heat during his time as the 49ers head coach for a lot of different things. Eric Heitmann's injury should not be one of them, and we as Viking fans shouldn't put too much stock into this whole thing.

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The HORROR!

This isn’t any different than the drills they’re running in Grid-KId and highschool football practices. Can you get hurt at football practice? . . . .YEP!

by Brady Longmore on Jul 3, 2011 1:08 PM CDT reply actions

this looks like a normal drill to me

by mattnmics on Jul 3, 2011 1:53 PM CDT reply actions

Terrible, just terrible

Utterly embarrassing… never have I seen such a gross misinterpretation of this Tchaikovsky masterpiece. Singletary should be ashamed of himself… though I am curious who is going to play the Sugarplum Fairy.

by Oi Oi Boy on Jul 3, 2011 2:30 PM CDT reply actions

In my defense

“Beware the Nutcracker” is also what my friends told me when I got engaged the first time.

They were right.

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by Christopher Gates on Jul 3, 2011 7:21 PM CDT up reply actions

I always prefer the Nutcracker to Bull in the Ring

Now that one would cause injuries on the pro level. But yes, the Nutcracker is just a normal football drill. Injuries in practice happen

by Frost on Jul 3, 2011 2:53 PM CDT reply actions

Well...

When I played little league this was the drill they’d do when they had too many players. This would almost always cause a few of the less dedicated kids to quit. It’s a pretty strtaightforward hitting drill, but I’ve never heard of it in college or pro ball.

Skol Vikings.

by LA Vikes Fan on Jul 3, 2011 3:34 PM CDT via mobile reply actions

In fairness

This is not what we did and called it the nutcracker. Sorry, I posted before watching the video. (Damn smartphone doesn’t handle video very well.) What we did involved running downfield ten yards, turning at 90 degree angles and running into each other at a full gallop. This just looks like any other line blocking drill.

Skol Vikings.

by LA Vikes Fan on Jul 3, 2011 9:07 PM CDT up reply actions