ESPN.com’s David Fleming wrote an interesting piece recently, outlining 12 reasons why NFL training camps should go.
Here are a couple of his points:
1. The Colts are the winningest team during the past decade, right? After all that preparation in camp, they’ve had one winning preseason in the past seven years.
2. Inside their enormous, spotless weight room on the first floor of Reliant Stadium last summer the Houston Texans used a giant board to keep track of every single offseason workout by every single member of the team. By the time the season started the board was completely filled. That would be 100 percent participation. Remarkable. Here’s how that translated onto the field: The Texans started 2-3 and missed the playoffs for the eighth year in a row.
3. I’m sorry to break this to you, but in pro sports, chemistry is a myth. If you could build chemistry through suffering then the Raiders would be the tightest group in the history of the NFL. Winning builds chemistry, not the other way around.
4. At 40, Brett Favre skipped training camp altogether and he ended up having his best season ever, throwing for 4,202 yards and 33 TDs (against just seven picks) with a completion percentage of 68.4 and a passer rating of 107.2.
You can read the rest of Fleming’s 12 reasons here.
Fleming brings up several valid points, although I’ll point out that teams need training camp to install new schemes and get rookies up to speed as much as possible before the season starts. Many teams start slow over the first couple weeks of the season because players are still trying to get into the swing of things. So could you imagine how long it would take for players to be at full go without training camp? We wouldn’t see good football for eight weeks.
That said, Fleming’s point about the amount of time players spend in training camp and how it translates to wins and losses is just. In the end, talent and execution will always win out – not how many practice sessions Player X got under his belt in August. It would be nice if teams and fans didn’t have to hold their breath hoping that no starter gets injured during camp, too.
