It's hard to pay attention to football when this is your view after a day of hiking.
You’ll have to excuse the last few weeks, which have been blessedly slow in Broncodom … it was the last chance to take a vacation. When this is your view, football doesn’t seem to matter quite as much. But now that my view is once again a disheveled desk and a television perpetually tuned to ESPN, some sports league’s network (MLB, NFL, NBA) or Simpsons and Seinfeld re-runs, it’s back to work.
With camp beginning in soon, we’ll begin a five-part countdown to camp examining the Broncos’ special teams, running game, passing game, rush defense and pass defense. For now, a quick dive into the mailbag …
I’ve read twice now on different places that the NFL banned the Mile High Salute. Is that true?
Jon
Newport, Pa.
It’s explicitly banned when one player salutes another. In 2004, the league passed a rule forbidding choreographed celebrations and those involving multiple players, one of many restrictions placed upon players — no external props (Joe Horn, Terrell Owens), no using the ball as a prop (Chad Johnson putting), nothing choreographed. The rules ban “excessive celebration,” a term dangerously open to interpretation. Spontaneous celebrations, however, are still allowed, and a Mile High Salute to the stands would seem to fall under the same category as the Lambeau Leap, however, an official could deem anything beyond a spike “excessive” if that’s how he sees it.
Too bad, because I’m an old codger who misses the Fun Bunch, “White Shoes” Johnson, backflips, the Nestea Plunge and Lonie Paxton’s snow angel after beating the Raiders in the divisional playoffs of January 2002. (But there are limits. A dozen years ago, I saw an Arena Football League player use a football to simulate a dog defecating after a touchdown.)
Every year, guys do great in training camp and are never heard from again. How difficult is it to analyze the progress of players in that setting?
Hal
Seattle, Wash.
It can be exceedingly difficult at times. Is one man’s success because of his own prowess, or is he going up against a player who’s simply camp fodder whose future involves facing B.C. instead of K.C.?
Team drills can be dicey to analyze: quarterbacks can’t be hit; seven-on-sevens see no pass rush; defenses know the run is coming in nine-on-seven. So you look for individual moves, but even that has a way of backfiring. Take Darius Watts, the second-round pick of 2004. On the first day of his rookie camp, he literally broke Lenny Walls’ ankle with a double move that necessitated surgery two days later. Understandably, Watts’ move drew notice; Walls was a starting cornerback the year before and seemed to have a bright future. (That future dimmed after the injury and he’s now on his third CFL team in as many seasons.) Watts, however, couldn’t build off the strong start, and joined the lengthy list of receivers who showed flashes on the practice field but couldn’t transfer it to the regular season. Remember Frank Rice, Kevin Kasper, Triandos Luke, Herb Haygood and Adrian Madise? All had their moments — and being more enthusiastically naïve at the time, I bought into their hype. These days, I’m more reserved; that happens when you see so many guys come and go over the years.
Interesting quote in that story … Not long after Walls went down, Mike Shanahan said team doctors “(did) not think it (would) set him back very long.” That’s why pencils have erasers and laptops have backspace keys.
What you’re looking for are patterns. Who’s lining up where? Who’s getting coached up? Who’s being read the riot act? Most importantly, who’s showing general improvement from day to day? Sometimes it’s obvious, particularly with young players. Often it isn’t, which is largely because once you get past the elite-caliber players of the roster, the differences between them are slim.
The chances to watch starter-on-starter can be rare, which is why I enjoyed watching Pro Bowlers Jordan Gross and Julius Peppers duel daily at training camp with the Panthers in 2008 and 2009. In my years covering camps, the only matchup that compared was the one between Rod Smith and Champ Bailey in the mid-2000s at Broncos camp, but they didn’t grapple in one-on-one drills too often. This summer, I hope we’ll see Demaryius Thomas and Bailey face each other.
Thanks for answering! I figured it was something like that, basically a player can do it to the fans (like Hillis did) depending on the ref right? Yet the Broncos can’t do it to each other…
Some of the NFL rules are a little bogus I think but whatever. Thanks man!
Interesting perspective. I too hear a lot of good things about rookies and players in their 2nd years that have yet to prove anything on the field, but always read or see on the boob tube how good these players are looking. By their 3rd year they’re cut or traded away. Obviously they are not playing on the level they should be or they simply don’t fit the mold of the player that the team was looking for.
Other teams are just ignorant and trade a player away too early as they seem to want instant results. That’s fine and dandy if you are plucking out of free agency but instant results rarely translate to someone’s first or 2nd years with the team. Rookies generally take 3 years to develop, and players new with the organization usually don’t start to improve until mid way through their first year once they’ve had some time to soak the playbook in.
[...] I read that it had been banned by the NFL. I asked around to see if that was true, and found that; It’s explicitly banned when one player salutes another, but Saluting the fans is permitted. blog comments powered by Disqus var disqus_url = [...]
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