Self-Organized Team Activities

Matt Ryan got the Falcons together for nine weeks of pandemic practices. It's worth noting the Packers didn't practice during the lockout and had one of the most explosive seasons in NFL history.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the on-the-field portions of the NFL offseason, including organized team activities. That doesn’t mean some resourceful quarterbacks haven’t conducted self-organized team activities.

As Albert Breer outlined in the SI.com Daily Cover about Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan:

The NFL allows for a nine-week offseason program for teams, with the first two weeks being designated as “dead ball.” That leaves seven weeks for quarterbacks and skill players to throw and catch. Via Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex, the guys have still gotten their classroom work with coaches (that’s another difference from 2011), which has left quarterbacks to make up for the field work.

And has Ryan ever worked to do that. He has engaged his teammates for the last nine weeks (that prescribed length isn’t an accident)—the first five in Georgia, followed by three in California, with the final week having just wrapped up outside Atlanta. They’d go three days per week, with sessions lasting between 90 and 105 minutes, and the work was detailed, deliberate and thorough.

Ryan is one of eight current NFL starting quarterbacks who were starters for the 2011 season. There were no offseason practices that year, either, due to a lockout that lingered to the precipice of training camp.

“There are a lot of similarities,” Ryan told Breer. “I think the No. 1 thing, it’s on the players. And it’s on me to make sure I’m creating access for the guys to get the work done that they needed to get done. And that was the same in the lockout. We had groups of guys that got together in that lockout year. We were able to put on player-led practices.

“The difference this year, with COVID, is limits on the number of players that can get together, trying to practice social distancing, and making sure that everybody’s staying safe. I think that part’s been different. The groups of guys that have gotten together for us, as a team, have been smaller than they were that lockout year, but the work has been really effective.”

Speaking on a Zoom call last month, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said “it would behoove all of us to figure out a way to get together.” If those practices eventually happened, the participants have been incrdibly tight-lipped. If those practices didn't happen, the Packers might not be hopelessly behind when training camp convenes (presumably) next month.

In 2011 – fresh off a Super Bowl championship – Rodgers caught his share of flak for not organizing team workouts during the lockout. Instead, the offense was sharp in the opener and all season. Green Bay beat New Orleans 42-34 in Week 1 en route to scoring the third-most points in NFL history.

Rodgers has brought up that season a few times over the years, including before last year’s opener against Chicago, when it was presumed Matt LaFleur’s first-year offense would suffer because the Rodgers-led No. 1 attack didn’t play any preseason reps together.

“We started out playing New Orleans, everyone was talking about how there was a lockout, the game was going to be way down, the fundamentals aren’t there, the performance is going to be way off,” Rodgers said before the Bears game. “And I threw three touchdowns in the first quarter and we won the game.”

Of course, those circumstances were different in that Rodgers was entering his fourth season running Mike McCarthy’s offense and he was surrounded by a veteran group of perimeter players. This will be Year 2 running LaFleur’s offense, with Year 1 not exactly producing banner results.

“I think anybody who went through it says the same thing. We never felt better from a physical standpoint,” Rodgers said last month. “That was a great offseason of training and being able to be in our home cities, I think, was really beneficial that year to come back and just feel physically in phenomenal shape. Now, it does also throw a spotlight on those who were doing the right thing during the offseason and those who maybe need more of a structure. That’s kind of the thing that’ll be the most glaring when and if we come back together. For us, in 2011, because we’d been in the system for so many years, it wasn’t as big of a difficulty jumping right back into the installs.”

With the offense back mostly intact, maybe the Packers’ offense will be just fine, regardless of whether Rodgers and the gang got together for some masked practices.