I want to say, before anything else, that I love a vacation. I adore some time off, and I know I’m not alone in this. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that most people enjoy vacation (even if that vacation is simply sitting at home, doing things that aren’t the thing you normally have to do). We can celebrate my bravery in holding this opinion later, the point is that the chance to rest, to recharge, to try and unwind that spot of tension that regularly knots itself up right between my shoulder blades; it’s a lovely thing, and an opportunity that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
It’s especially worth celebrating in a field that takes such a physical toll as playing football. My day job centers primarily around emails and meetings, and the aforementioned knot between my shoulder blades — while annoying — is about the extent of physical damage that I ever have to recover from. Football players, on the other hand, are hurt more often than not; it’s typically just a matter of how much pain a player is willing to play through or a consideration of whether the injury will be made much worse by playing through it.
A bye week is a midseason gift, an opportunity to rest and rehab those nagging aches and pains from the weeks past and get prepared for the weeks to come. It’s a beat of calm in the midst of an incredibly violent season, a brief respite from the prolonged impact of a college football season. It’s a great opportunity for a functional coaching staff to mix things up, or to fix things that aren’t working. The invisible work that goes into a bye week can make or break a season, but the time away isn’t without costs.
For some teams, momentum is everything. A bye week can interrupt game-week rhythms, leading to disjointed performances and embarrassing losses. For others, a bye week is a safe harbor in choppy waters, a place to retreat and lick wounds from the beginning of the season. Premise of this post aside, it shouldn’t be conflated with a vacation; there’s real work being done in this off week. Whether that work will pay off is another question.
There are similarities between a bye week and a vacation, though. When I leave my office for a week, there’s a little voice in the back of my mind that reminds me of what will inevitably be waiting for me when I return; hundreds upon hundreds of emails, requests, and questions, lurking in my inbox and waiting to bury me as soon as I log back on.
The Tar Heels have a mountain of questions to answer, as well. Coming out of this bye week, lurking on the field tomorrow afternoon is a matchup with the #3 Fighting Irish. After a brutal collapse against a pedestrian Clemson team, will Carolina have any answers for the Irish? Will the time off be of any benefit to a team that is, at least on paper, well and truly overmatched? There’s no choice but to hit the ground running; nothing to it but to start digging out of the mountain of questions that threaten to bury this team.
It’s time to get back to work.
Source: www.tarheelblog.com
