Are teams practicing enough in training camp?
League rules make it difficult to prepare for start of season
In the week that followed a 23-3 preseason loss to the Baltimore Ravens, an outcome that underscored how far the Washington Redskins have to go before their Week 1 opener at FedEx Field on Sept. 10, nothing much changed at practice.
There was a bit more urgency in Coach Jay Gruden's commands. “Let's go, now!” the coach bellowed after the horn sounded the start of 11-on-11 drills during Thursday's session. “We're trying to win here! We're trying to win!”
And there was a bit of game-planning with Saturday's preseason opponent in mind, as the Redskins' first-team offense lined up against a scout team tasked with mimicking the Green Bay Packers' defense, and the first-team defense faced scout-teamers posing as the Aaron Rodgers-led offense.
But for the most part, the Aug. 10 embarrassment at Baltimore didn't force a major rethinking of the Redskins' approach to practice. Rather, Gruden suggested, the defeat reflected a lack of focus and intensity that fell on him.
“We're still preparing the same way,” Gruden said, when asked what he had changed after a loss he and quarterback Kirk Cousins characterized as “a wake-up call.” “I just think everybody has to come out and understand the other team has an agenda, also. We didn't match the same agenda, and that's probably my fault.”
Heading into his fourth season in Washington, Gruden, 50, has accomplished something no coach has since Daniel Snyder bought the team in 1999 - earning a contract extension, awarded in March, for the steady progress that produced the Redskins' first backto-back winning season in 19 years.
But Gruden has yet to win a season opener. His teams have started 1-2 in each of his three seasons, forced to play from behind in what has become an annual scramble to make the playoffs. (That, too, has been a 1-2 proposition.) The pattern of slow starts raises questions about whether the Redskins work hard enough in their three-week training camp in Richmond and in the two weeks of practice that follow at their own facility in Ashburn - and whether their inability to schedule joint practices with another NFL team either of the last two years leaves them at a competitive disadvantage.
Gruden doesn't hide from the fact that he could demand more tackling and blocking drills than he does. The balance he strikes is made with full awareness of the risk of getting players injured versus the reward of getting them ready for the hard-hitting regular season.
Throughout the NFL, it's a calculus that all coaches are working out.
Midway through Thursday's patchy preseason tilt between Tampa Bay and Jacksonville, Michael Lombardi, a former NFL personnel executive with Cleveland, Philadelphia and Oakland and assistant to New England's coaching staff, mused on Twitter that it has gotten to the point where football fans can't honestly judge teams until mid-October. “So many coaches are more worried about injuries than getting their team ready,” Lombardi tweeted.
There is reason behind their thinking. It's far more important to a team's success (and a head coach's job security) to have its best players healthy for the 16 games that count than risk losing them in the preseason.
Even the most hard-driving coaches are now restrained by NFL rules limiting the amount of contact in training camp. In the interest of players' safety, teams can only hold one practice in helmets and pads daily during camp, and that session must be limited to two hours.
That's considerably less hitting than existed in Doug Williams' era (1978-89) and even a decade ago, when Redskins safety Will Blackmon, who is from Cranston and went to Bishop Hendricken, was a young defensive back.
“I participated in two-a-day [practices] in Green Bay during camp, and I'm talking about two full practices,” recalled Blackmon, 32. Asked if it was beneficial, Blackmon didn't hesitate. “No! It was rough! Guys were getting hurt! I feel like coaches across the league have a better understanding that if their guys aren't healthy, you're not gonna have a beneficial season.”
Williams, who earned Super Bowl MVP honors in the Redskins' 42-10 rout of Denver to cap the 1987 season, declined to weigh in on the question of whether the current limitations on camp make it more difficult to prepare a team for the regular season. But he was quick to add that it's no excuse for performing poorly in the preseason.
“The same rules apply to every team in this league, so we can't use that as an excuse,” said Williams, the Redskins executive vice president for player personnel. “We just have got to be cognizant of it and train the guys, 'Hey, this is what has to happen [when play begins].'”
Despite the restrictions on the physicality and duration of training camp, there are variables that can make one camp more productive than another. Among them: Maximizing the allotted time.
For the Redskins, the daily portion of practice dedicated to special-teams work is an opportunity for other players to relax. Some do just that, while others, such as wide receiver Terrelle Pryor, spend it doing drills on their own.
Running back Chris Thompson still has vivid memory of the way the Patriots ended practice when New England visited Redskins camp in Richmond for a two-day joint workout in 2014. As the Redskins trudged to the showers, Patriots players marched to an adjacent field en masse, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on a sideline and did wind sprints.
“I paid attention to what they did,” Thompson recalls. “We had just had a full, twohour practice, but they went and lined up and did these sprints. It just happened! They did it and never questioned it.”
And then there's the issue of joint practices themselves. For many NFL teams, holding practice with a rival during training camp has become a key part of their preparation. The Redskins did so in 2014 and 2015 but haven't since, finding it difficult to locate a team willing to visit their camp in Richmond without a reciprocal visit in subsequent years. The Redskins are precluded from visiting other camps under the eight-year contract they signed to hold training camp in Richmond.
The Patriots have held joint practices for the last six years. This summer, the five-time Super Bowl champions scrimmaged against two teams - hosting Jacksonville for a joint practice Aug. 7-8 then visiting Houston's training camp in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, for a two-day scrimmage earlier this week.
“The old saying goes, 'Iron sharpens iron,'” said Texans defensive end J.J. Watt, three-time NFL defensive player of the year, when asked about the merits of scrimmaging against fourtime Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady. “He's obviously one of the best quarterbacks to have ever played the game. It's always good to go out there and get some reps against somebody of that caliber. It's a lot of fun. Any time you put two good teams together on the practice field
“He's obviously one of the best quarterbacks to have ever played the game. It's always good to go out there and get some reps against somebody of that caliber. It's a lot of fun.” – J.J. Watt on practicing with Tom Brady