Random Thoughts – August 6th
Patriots Training Camp Updates with Gratuitous Cheerleader Pictures: Featuring Angela
A recap of the last few days of Patriots training camp:
*I went to the afternoon practice on Sunday. As many times as I've been, I can't shake this expectation that an NFL training camp is a non-stop, grueling, punishing, grind. That it's all coaches screaming at guys while they sweat and groan in the blistering heat such that if you set the coaches tape to a synth rock soundtrack you could make an '80s movie montage out of it. The truth is, Patriots camp looks a lot more like baseball spring training than any scene from "VisionQuest." They do work, but the emphasis is on X's and O's, and installing plays and not so much on drilling or conditioning, which I assume gets done in the gym.
*But not a second gets wasted. It's a model of efficiency. Like Archie Bunker said of Mussolini, "He was no bundle of laughs, but he made the trains run on time." That's Belichick. A clock ticks down every segment of practice and when it gets to 0:00, an airhorn sounds and everyone moves on to the next thing. And zero time is spent explaining to the team what that next part of practice or the next thing they're working on is; they just know. It's like they've practiced their practice.
*They began working on kickoffs and returns for 12 minutes. Airhorn. They moved on to QBs and receivers going through their route trees for 7 minutes. Horn. Then it was on to the far field for light sprints and warm ups for 15 minutes, which was oddly accompanied by Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen. If that was for the 80's montage effect, it didn't exactly pull it off, since the players weren't doing much more than stretching their hammys. The closest thing to any real "Junction Boys" style training camping was the lineman working on hand techinques with a heavy bag while back and receivers did agility drills sidestepping over pylons. But even that was only slightly more exerting than the old pitchers-covering-first drill.
*The most remarkable sight was watching Brady, Matt Guittierez and Kevin O'Connell working on 3-step drop throws (Matt Cassel was working with the WRs). Here's Brady, the apex of the celebrity-athlete pyramid, taking turns with a 3rd round rookie and an undrafted scrubini like he was one of them. And to be honest, there wasn't a major difference in their techniques. If anything, Brady's spiral wasn't as tight as the other two.
*The only indication you had that Brady was a bigger deal than them was that while waiting for his turn in the rotation, he impregnated three women in the crowd. It would've been more, but the fourth one was wearing a red "no contact" jersey.