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.