John Fox is ahead of the curve when it comes to training camp; talk about a sentence you’d never expect to read or type, but it’s true. When it comes to managing time outs or challenges in a game or preparing a team for a Super Bowl, Fox fails (miserably). But if you read between the lines of his training camp policy, you’ll see he’s on to something.
Training camp is totally pointless, for everyone.
It’s shocking that Fox, the king of mundane, is the only one willing to spill the beans. Training camp is an antiquated institution from a time gone by. In today’s NFL training camp is a neutered shadow of what it used to be. Very little is gained from the 2015 version of camp.
Taking a step back, this all stems from Fox’s crackdown on media members at training camp, so let’s start there.
Last week Fox took a ton of heat when he released the rules for media members at Bears training camp. Essentially, credentialed media members aren’t allowed to tweet or write what they see at camp under the fear of being kicked out of the facility and having their credentials pulled. On the surface that sounds ridiculous.
“He’s telling us not to do our jobs,” says overzealous media guy.
But, what overzealous media guy doesn’t want you to know is that training camp is nothing more than a dog and pony show for the fans. Players and coaches are there to put on a show, get the fans excited for the season and sell a product.
If you think that’s false ask yourself this, what are the major storylines thus far at camp? Who’s filling in for Ryan Clady? Will Danny Trevathan and Brandon Marshall be ready Week 1? Are the Broncos going to carry three kickers again? And, is Peyton Manning really going to get days off?
Well, you didn’t need camp to figure any of that out.
Yes, everyone’s watched Conner Barth work on kickoffs, Sambrailo run with the ones, Travathan and Marshall practice regularly and Manning get his rest, but you could have gleaned all of that from every press conference Gary Kubiak or John Elway gave this offseason.
To their credit, the Broncos were very forthcoming with all of that information. No one needed training camp to learn that.
This doesn’t mean that training camp has always been irrelevant, because quite the opposite is true. Before the NFL became a full-time job, players used the late summer months as a time to reacclimatize their bodies to the rigors of the NFL. Two-a-days in pads were the norm and three-a-days weren’t unheard of. Players were forced to earn their spots on the roster year in and year out and no one trained in the offseason. That’s when showing up to camp and whipping yourself back into shape was necessary. Players fought (literally) for everything and rookies like Sambrailo didn’t walk in with starting jobs handed to them. Therein lies the reality.
No longer is training camp a competition for 53 jobs. It’s a well-orchestrated dance to fool those who think it’s important. Training camp is no different than OTAs and no shows up for those. What’s the difference? It’s the name.
Fox wasn’t being a jerk when he enacted his harsh rules on training camp reporters. He was actually shining light on the ridiculousness of camp. It’s not that there’s something to hide by releasing information on certain information’s or schemes, it’s that it’s pointless to do so.
