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Dartmouth Coach: Don’t Tackle in Practice
Dartmouth Coach Buddy Teevens on MVP Robotics: ‘We’ll never go back to the old way’ MVP began as a collaboration between Dartmouth head football coach Buddy Teevens and a group of engineers and athletes from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. The idea behind the robotic tackling dummy was to help reduce unnecessary contacts and the incidence of injuries suffered during football and other sporting practices.
BY DAN GUTTENPLAN
At Dartmouth, concussions were reduced by 58% in the first two seasons of implementing the MVP Drives into practice. The team has continued to use the technology for the last seven years on its way to becoming the winningest team in the Ivy League during that stretch.
Since starting to use the MVP Drive technology, Dartmouth is both the best tackling team in the conference and the team that has lost the fewest games to injury.
Teevens recently joined FNF Coaches to talk about his experience with MVP. f How did the relationship with MVP Drive come about?
“It was about 10 years ago. Our injury rate was high, particularly with concussions and subconcussive hits. I was a quarterback when I played, and I never got tackled. I did OK. So, I decided to eliminate live tackling periods. I called a friend in Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and said I wanted to create a tackling dummy that could move and simulate live game action.” f How did your coaching staff react to the idea of taking live tackling periods out of practice?
“I told them it would cut the injury risk in half by taking one human out of the equation. It was
■ Dartmouth coach
Buddy Teevens
not a popular decision with the coaching staff right off the bat. It was about coming up with a way we could work with something nonhuman to simulate the skills we worked on in practice. We actually became better teachers of tackling. We coached players the way they worked. Defensive linemen don’t tackle the same way as safeties. The concussions and orthopedic injuries dropped significantly.” f How did it impact the way your players tackled during games?
“We’re the best tackling team in the Ivy League. We miss about five tackles a game – down from 15 to 20 before. People say we don’t tackle in practice, but we actually tackle a lot – just not humans. With the robot, you don’t see stride length or arm action change, so you have to be very precise.” f How do the players like the robots?
“At first, they were like, ‘What are you kidding? I’m a Division 1 linebacker and I’m not tackling anybody?’ They weren’t hurt as much. They felt better going into games at the college level than they ever did in high school. Last year, 21 of our 22 starters played in every game.” f Have you ever gone back to live tackling periods after a game in which your team missed a lot of tackles?
“At Dartmouth, no player has ever tackled another player in their time here. We’ll never go back to the old way. You hear thud, we prefer bump. We’ll have freshmen in that first period blow up a tight end. Everyone will be yelling at him that we don’t do that. We protect our own.”
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