Now that the NFL lockout has come to a merciful end, it’s time for players to return to their respective teams and get back to work.
Barring any 11th-hour change of plans, all 32 teams are expected to begin training camp by week’s end.
Since teams and coaching staffs have been forbidden to have any contact with players during the lockout, the annual physical and weigh-in at the start of camp should be a real eye-opener.
The Colts are dealing with the fact that Peyton Manning is still recovering from off-season neck surgery and they aren’t sure if he will be healthy enough to start practicing once camp gets underway.
Coaches around the league have an even bigger concern than what kind of shape their players are in. Because of the rules set forth in the new labour agreement, how coaches get their players ready for this season will be totally different than anything they’ve ever experienced.
First off, under the terms of the new CBA, coaches are not allowed to make players practice in pads until the fourth day of training camp. Teams are permitted to open camp 15 days before their first pre-season game.
Once the players are allowed to wear pads, the amount of hitting and contact they are involved in has been reduced. The theory is by reducing the amount of hitting in camp, this will help prevent injuries and more importantly, cut down on the number of concussions.
While I commend the efforts of both the NFL and NFLPA to reduce injuries, putting in restrictions on how often players take part in full contacts drills in training camp won’t make many coaches happy campers.
Take the Baltimore Ravens for example. After spending a day at their camp last year in Westminster, Md., it was quite clear that coach John Harbaugh believes in an intense, hard-hitting approach to camp. When the Ravens went into their full-contact, 11-on-11 drills, it was amazing to watch just how hard the players pounded on each other.
To Harbaugh and the Ravens, they felt that was the best way possible to get the team ready for the rough-and-tumble AFC North.
This year, and for at least the next 10 years, Harbaugh and the rest of the coaching fraternity will have to change the way they operate as they are under strict guidelines as to how often their players wear pads in camp and how often they hit each other.
Not every coach thinks like Harbaugh or feels the need to hit in camp quite as much as the Ravens. But as long as football coaches have held training camp, there has always been some element of contact and hitting.
So not only will coaches have to deal with new rules governing the very way they run their respective camps, they will likely be in a situation where recently-signed free agents will be showing up to practice on a daily basis.
“Hi coach, my name is Chad Ochocinco, and I am your new receiver. By the way, what is the name of the starting quarterback on this team again?
It will be an even more difficult task for coaches to try to implement any kind of new offensive scheme to a group of players that for the most part, have no idea concerning the terminology in the playbook.
In a normal year, a team would have conducted numerous mini-camps with new free agents and recently-signed draft picks to familiarize them with the team’s offence and the language of the playbook. Every team in the NFL has a unique way of calling plays. A typical NFL playbook is roughly 200 pages. In some more complex offences, the playbook can be even longer.
Established quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Tom Brady already have an encyclopedic knowledge of their team’s offence and terminology meaning the veteran teams in the NFL will go into the regular season with a big advantage on offense.
But teams with news coaches and/or new quarterbacks will be in for a tough training camp. Not only do the Carolina Panthers have a new head coach in Ron Rivera, they are also trying to groom No. 1 draft pick Cam Newton and get him up to speed on what it takes to win in the NFL.
It won’t get a whole lot better during the regular season. Following the end of the pre-season, coaches are only allowed to make players practice in pads a total of 14 times. In the course of a normal season, a team will take part in approximately 50 practices. Put another way, three-quarters of a team’s practices during the regular season won’t feature full pads or any hitting.
Vince Lombardi must be rolling over in his grave at the thought of not being allowed to run a practice the way he wants.
But under the NFL’s new CBA, those days are all but over.
As much as they might complain, coaches have little choice to adapt and embrace the new way of doing things.