Camp Contact: Bears Gear Up for Hitting in Practice
Preseason games probably rank slightly ahead of wind sprints in popularity with NFL players.
The preseason is only appreciated by younger players looking for jobs at the end of rosters, but this year without exhibition contests coaches around the league are saddled with the task of finding innovative ways to physically toughen teams for a regular season of full contact.
"I'm not really a fan of the preseason, as well, I mean, I'm OK with it," Bears linebacker Danny Trevathan said.
The Bears will have occasional full contact in practices after padding up for the first time Monday, in order to "callous" players, as coach Matt Nagy likes to call it.
It will be a fun daily sidebar to the quarterback competition between Mitchell Trubisky and Nick Foles, but can be a dangerous one.
"You have to have some flexibility there in how you do that," Nagy said. "We'll end up going though practice, when we want to get into the 7-on-7, Ones vs. Ones, how that works reps-wise. And when you do get into the games and scrimmage-type environment, understanding, we do that every year, and when you throw some live (hitting) in there obviously no one touches the quarterback.
"It tends to ramp up a little bit and everyone understands it. We have a plan and a process that we are working through right now."
The contact is particularly critical on defense. Tackling a dummy only helps so much.
"It's going to be a huge challenge for everybody across the league because we're all going to want to have live periods," defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano said. "Everybody's scared to death to do that in practice."
No one wants to lose a key player to a big or awkward hit by a teammate in a practice.
"We'll have periods where we're thud, you know, we (coaches) can control it," Pagano said. "We'll have some live periods where we'll tackle to the ground, and we'll still teach the proper techniques."
It won't be the first time these players arrive at a regular season without being tested by another team live. Some will really need to reach back into their memory banks to recall the last time they did it extensively, however.
"Obviously in college football you don't have any preseason games," running backs coach Charles London said. "You practice for about a month before you go into the season. It's going to be similar to what every NFL team is doing this year."
London called it a difficult process.
"You practice for a month without a game and you get sick of beating on each other," London said. "That gets old for players after a while. You have to always take that into consideration. You have to figure out ways to have competitive situations, competitive environments. Because you do have battles out there. Guys have to be able to compete.
"We won't be able to go against another team until the season-opener."
Key among things to ponder is whether it's better to pit first team against first team in live scrimmage or mix it up? Specifically with the Bears, do they really want to put a first-team offense that's trying to find its wings, so to speak, against a horde as vicious as their own first-team defense?
As much as the full-contact periods with offense against the defense might help, Pagano thinks the individual work players do each day in practice will determine team performance in games.
"It's still a matter of taking on blocks, getting off blocks, pursuing the football, taking great angles, great pad level, great knee bend, and fitting things up," Pagano said.
"It's going to come down to us as coaches in the individual position drills to really work the tackling, the different kind of tackling drills: open fields, angle tackles, close-quarter tackles, all those kinds of things," Pagano added.
It's not as much fun as the thought of Oklahoma drills or Bull in the Ring, or even full-contact scrimmage, but technique makes all the difference and in the end it's what preseason games always intended to sharpen.
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