The Syracuse Orange football team is practicing in full pads but Dino Babers' big concern right now is keeping everyone healthy.
"The contact's really been down to a minimum," Babers said. "Our numbers are down so low that we're trying to keep everybody healthy as long as we can during spring ball."
"It was very, very short (live period) and it was just to give them a little taste of it," Babers said.
Instead of making it about hitting, Babers is making it all about conditioning. According to Stephen Bailey, Zach Mahoney ran close to 150 plays on Tuesday, and the offense is still only "20 percent" installed.
Meanwhile, we've heard a few things along the way about how Babers wants to change eating habits and parts of the culture around the team and part of that is removing certain bad foodstuffs from the equation. That's why he's removed all soda products from the vending machines.
Babers and his staff removed all soda products from the vending machines at SU's facilities. Instead, the program is pushing water as a primary hydration source — and a critical one given the pace at which the team practices.
"If you want to be doing the things we're going to be doing, you just don't drink soda," Babers said. "You can drink water. You can drink juices. You can drink Gatorade. You can drink Powerade. But soda just kind of defeats what we're trying to do."
Powerade and Gatorade are chocked full of sugar and high fructose corn syrup, but, sure. I see your point, Dino.
As far as the health of players, Babers noted that he seemed to have a lot of players who came into camp with shoulder injuries. He didn't name names but Zaire Franklin, Josh Parris, and Seamus Shanley have been limited so far.