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These are excerpts. To read the whole article click the link below. Rams after Gruden article.
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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/08/20/jon-gruden-raiders-training-camp-fmia-peter-king/
With or Without Laces, Jon Gruden Just Wants to Compete
By Peter King
Getty Images
NAPA, Calif. — “No-lace football now!”
No-lace football. Anybody ever hear of that?
Jon Gruden has. When the drill started near midfield halfway through a Raider training camp practice one day last week, Gruden was fired up. “Let’s see what you got, Derek Carr!” he said. Derek Carr, getting ready to start the drill, had a big smile. He looked fired up.
A ballboy brought out a black Raiders ballbag with a dozen NFL footballs. What happened next was almost too fast to notice what was going on. Carr took six shoveled snaps from a ballboy in the span of 11 seconds and threw right, left, right, left, snap-way-high-and throw-right, and left. As happens often in a game, Carr had no time to center the ball in his hand to find the laces—he had to throw the moment he got it in his right hand.
And you noticed the color of the tight spiral was totally brown. Usually when you watch a spiraled throw, you see the fast rotation of the ball with the white laces flashing every, whatever, fifteenth of a second. Not here. Solid brown.
There were no laces on these dozen footballs.
That’s weird. It’s sort of Gruden. I’d come here to judge whether the 55-year-old Gruden—more sedate, a bit more thoughtful, with a voice that didn’t dominate practice the way the 38-year-old Gruden did the last time he was on a Raider practice field—was the same intenso guy who ran the Raiders a long time ago. Did his decade out of football dull his ardor for the game?
He’s still the sneering, calculating Gruden, I think. He does get up an hour later in the morning, but I give him credit for admitting he’s not the up-at-3:17 a.m. nut job he used to be.
Whether all that matters when the games start is another matter. But it’s a fun show out here in cabernet country.
This column was going to start at 5 a.m. sharp on the first floor of the Napa Marriott, the summer home of the Raiders, in the video den of Jon Gruden. But I took a sharp turn after seeing practice. First reason: On a quiet day in Napa, with only a handful of fans in the bleachers on either side of the fields out the backdoor of the Marriott, Gruden’s voice could not be heard for the first 51 minutes of practice.
He watched, he quietly taught. Later in practice, it was the No-Lace Football Drill. Shovel snaps, some of them purposely lousy, with six straight very fast throws per quarterback, using wall-to-wall brown footballs.
“That’s pretty Gruden right there,” Carr said. “Good idea. He had me do that at the ESPN QB camp a few years ago too. You get used to throwing without the laces. I’d guess 40 percent of my throws in college were not with the laces. Get it quick, pressure, get it out. I like practicing it with speed.”
Gruden: “All these ESPN shows we did with the quarterbacks—60 shows, I think. The TV copy from their college games … quarterbacks in the shotgun, and their fingers aren’t on the laces. Hardly ever. So I’ve said if you’re going to practice something in a drill, it’s got to be based on two things: what happens the most in a game, and what a guy needs to work on.
Well, if we’re going to throw the ball with your fingers not on the laces, we better get some balls with no laces, and we better practice using balls with no laces, and we better practice at the speed that they’re throwing with no laces in a game. You got a coach there telling the quarterback where to throw: ‘Left, right, right, bad snap, low snap, left, right.’ So that’s what we do. We gotta make these quarterbacks mentally quicker every day, gotta get them to be quicker with the arm and the ball.”
This was a continuation of what we talked about at 5 in the morning, when Gruden told me: “If there’s a better way of doing something in football, I’m gonna try and find out and apply and incorporate it into what we do. I’m not a big fan of the GPSs and the sleep bracelets. I don’t believe you wear [virtual reality] goggles in quarterback meetings and get 3D reps. I still think it’s about hard work. I think you need to go out there, practice it full speed.”
No one knows how this chemistry experiment between Gruden and owner Mark Davis and Oakland and Las Vegas will work out. The Gruden I saw for a day last week isn’t the in-practice foghorn he used to be. “Passionate, intense, but probably a little quieter,” said quarterback Derek Carr.
But in how Gruden acts, how he works and how he installs drills and plays and innovations like the no-lace ball drill, he looks like the guy looking for any edge he can find to beat the new kids on the NFL block—ironically, the ones he birthed in professional football.
Think of what you must think if you’re Gruden, looking at the NFL landscape. By the time you were 39, you’d made the playoffs three years in a row as a head coach and won a Super Bowl; you were an offensive phenom. Then you coached your last six years in Tampa and fell to earth a bit—zero playoff wins, you get dismissed, and you take a job in the TV booth that was never really all you. You always wanted to come back.
You also must think this: In 2004, you hired 24-year-old Kyle Shanahan for his first NFL job as a low-level offensive assistant in Tampa. In 2008, you hired 22-year-old Sean McVay for his first NFL job as a low-level offensive assistant in Tampa. Now they’re the offensive phenoms.
At 31, McVay took over the Rams last year and turned them from the league’s 32nd-rated offense to number one in one season, and the Rams won the division. At 37, Shanahan (“a genius,” Tony Romo calls him) looks to be set in San Francisco with Jimmy Garoppolo at quarterback so the 49ers can be a force for years.
You’re Gruden, and you started them on their road to phenomness, and now everyone’s looking at you. Can Gruden still do it? Have the students passed the teacher, and can the teacher be as good as he was a generation ago?
We’ll see. Week 1: McVay at Gruden. Week 9: Gruden at Shanahan.
“The one thing I would say that’s so different for Jon is, I don’t really look at it as he’s been out of football for nine years,” McVay told me last week. “I look at it as he’s had a different lens into the game. He’s always been preparing himself to use that platform as an advantage so when he did come back, like getting to know all the quarterbacks from his QB Camp, he’d be ready.
His up-close look at the different ways people practice from traveling around doing the Monday night games is valuable exposure. We’re all a product of our experiences and the environments you’re placed in. He’s been exposed to all of them. I’ve met with him throughout the course of the last decade, talking ball. I’m still always learning from this guy.
He’s sent us notes, using extra footage from his Monday night telecasts, to help us have better teaching tapes because of the angles that you’re getting from all of the cameras. He’s going to do a great job.”
“I just want to compete again,” Gruden said, back in his Marriott lair. “I’m proud of Shanahan, proud of my brother [Washington coach Jay Gruden], proud of McVay.”
“You used to be them,” I said. “The brilliant offensive guy.”
“Yeah,” Gruden said. ”They’re good. They’re really good. Unfortunately, I’ve got to get in the ring with them now. I know they want to get after me. I guess I could say the feeling’s mutual. I want to beat them too.”
Getty Images
Staccato, quick-hit Gruden:
• On his coaching style at 55: “I’m trying to match the work ethic that I put forth 15 years ago, whatever it was, when I was here. That’s number one. You have to get everybody on board. I haven’t seen my wife in like three weeks; she’s got to be on board. It’s hard saying goodbye to my mom and dad in Florida. I miss them. Being honest with you. I kind of felt sad about that because I like looking out for them. But I’ve got to do this. Time’s flying.”
• On the changes in football since he last coached in 2008: “I don’t like what we’ve done to the profession, personally. I don’t like the CBA. I don’t like regulating hard work. By god, if a guy wants to come here in April and learn his plays? Wants to go out there and watch tape with me? I think he ought to be able to do that. He wants to come in and use our billion dollar facility? He ought to be able to use that. Really disappoints me to no end. For players, this is their time in life to make a team, make a profession, make some money, have some fun. I don’t like it. Are the rules better, or are they just more rules?”
• On what he wants this team to be: “You gotta have guys that would jump over the water coolers to cover a kick when the game’s on the line. You gotta have guys that behind the scenes are always thinking about the game, that love it. We needed some passion. We needed more passion I think in this locker room. I think we needed more versatility. I hope we’ve got that. We’ve had one winning team here in [15 seasons]. It’s not good enough.”
• On his reported 10-year, $100-million contract, and a football coach making $100 million: “I’m not making $100 million, just so you know. Well, I never thought Tom Cruise, never thought his movies were any good but he’s making plenty of money. There’s a lot of things that I don’t understand. No disrespect to Tom Cruise. I’m sure he’s a great actor.
But you know what? You just go about your life as hard as you can. You try to find something you love and you do the best you can at it. I never got into coaching for the money. I got into coaching because I wanted to be a quarterback coach. What the salary cap has become, what free agency has become—it’s amazing.”
• On what he took from Al Davis, who traded him in 2002 to Tampa Bay: “I got a lot of respect for him, obviously. A lot of people think we clashed. We didn’t clash, really. Yeah, he traded me. But he fast-tracked me. He beat me up at times, and I probably needed beating up. I was probably in over my head when I first signed up for this job.”
• On Derek Carr: “There’s no question that he’s got more talent than anybody I’ve ever coached. He’s athletic. He can make any throw you can imagine. He loves it. If you’re a Raider fan, get a ticket, because he is really fun to watch. He has really done a great job at this camp. There’s really not anything he can’t do.”
We did have an interesting exchange about the Tuck Rule game. Raider Trivia: What was the last game Jon Gruden coached for Oakland? It was the playoff game in Foxboro in the 2001 season, when Charles Woodson stripped Tom Brady and in effect would have all but clinched the game … but the call was reversed, with ref Walt Coleman claiming the “tuck rule” should have been called, making the aborted Brady “throw” an incomplete pass. The Patriots kicked the tying field goal to send the game to overtime, then won on another field goal, and went on to win their first Super Bowl of five in the Belichick/Brady Era.
Smoke out of Gruden’s ears, 17-and-a-half years later.
“That’s probably a big reason I’m never going to be a fan of instant replay,” Gruden said. “Instant replay was [meant] to correct an obvious wrong. I don’t know how they worded it. But they shouldn’t have overturned that play. That’s a complete joke. Where’s the tuck rule today, Peter? It’s not even in the game. When you overturn a play for a rule like that, that’s no way to lose a game. Especially a playoff game.
“It is what it is, as they say today.”
That’s about it.
“Anything else you want to say?” I asked as my time ticked down. It was 5:19. I could tell he was itching for me, respectfully, to scram.
“I don’t want to say anything,” he said. “I just want to work. We’re a 6-10 team.”
Time to think of some more things like no-lace practice periods. He knows he’s got phenoms to keep up with, and to pass.
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Numbers Game
No good team shook up the roster in the offseason as much as the Rams. How’d they do? We can’t know with finality until the fate of Aaron Donald has been decided. My sense is the great defensive tackle, a camp holdout, will not play on the contract (one year, $6.89 million) remaining. My money is on the Rams and Donald getting a deal done by Labor Day, but that’s just my gut.
Without factoring in the Donald deal, let’s examine what the Rams lost and gained this off-season—and whether they’re better off for it.
GONE
Robert Quinn, DE: 1 year, $12.93 million (Traded to Dolphins)
Alec Ogletree, LB: 4 years, $32 million (Traded to Giants)
Sammy Watkins, WR: 3 years, $48 million (Signed by Chiefs)
Trumaine Johnson, CB: 5 years, $72.5 million (Signed by Jets)
Tavon Austin, WR/Ret: 1 year, $3 million (Traded to Cowboys)
Total: 5 players, 14 years, $168.43 milion
ARRIVED/STAYED
Marcus Peters, CB: 2 years, $11.1 million
Aqib Talib, CB: 2 years, $19 million
Ndamukong Suh, DT: 1 year, $14 million
Brandin Cooks, WR: 6 years, $85 million
Lamarcus Joyner, S: 1 year, $11.28 million
Todd Gurley, RB: 6 years, $69.45 million
Total: 6 players, 18 years, $209.83 million
How’d they do? Cooks is better for the Sean McVay offense than Watkins or Austin; he can play all three receiver spots in the Rams offense. Peters and Talib are short-term gains and give defensive coordinator Wade Phillips two potential shutdown corners—though both are incendiary players who may have an incident or two during the season.
Suh is 31 but still a major disruptive force inside. The Rams weren’t going to re-sign Quinn after this season, and he’s missed 16 games due to injury in the last three years. Phillips signed off on the loss of Ogletree, wanting the cornerbacks instead; they’re more valuable in his defense.
And this summer, the Rams have locked in ace running back Todd Gurley for his age-24-through-29 seasons, presumably his six prime years as a runner, at an average cost of $11.6 million a year.
All in all, if GM Les Snead gets the Donald deal done by opening day, the Rams will have managed a top-heavy roster very well this offseason. But signing Donald … it’s a very big, and crucial, if.
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Reining In Replay
The new NFL rules analyst for NBC Sports, Terry McAulay, tells me he thinks there will be a major change in how replay is adjudicated this year, and it’s the one element of 2018 officiating that has gotten “zero press.” McAulay said: “The league doesn’t want those technical reversals that we saw over and over last year. Replay is for clear and obvious errors, and that was not the case last year.”
Oh, I know that. The Kelvin Benjamin overturn of a touchdown that certainly was not indisputable wither way was a black mark on a replay system run amok last year. Vice president of officiating Al Riveron went way beyond reasonable in his overturns of several calls, none worse than the Benjamin play.
Now, after the Benjamin TD in the corner of the end zone in Week 16 at New England was overturned, look at this call that wasn’t overturned, or even questioned, Saturday in the Rams-Raiders game. Tell me that the referee shouldn’t have examined this one, ruled as a fumble by the crew on the field, in consultation with the officiating command center in New York.
View: https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1030918010301689856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1030918010301689856&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fprofootballtalk.nbcsports.com%2F2018%2F08%2F20%2Fjon-gruden-raiders-training-camp-fmia-peter-king%2F
“We knew the league was going to be more circumspect on replay this year, but to go this extent—this fumble wasn’t even stopped to be reviewed—is a big change,” McAulay said. “With my new job at NBC, I’m going to be much more cautious about saying a call should be reversed. Why have replay if it’s not going to reverse this play?”
Next week: I plan to address the leading-with-the-helmet hits now being flagged in the preseason, with McAulay’s thoughts and mine, and those of players from the preseason trail. It needs some space, and some thought, and I’ll give it to you next Monday.
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The Cowboys, Remade
OXNARD, Calif. —You know what I love doing at training camps? I love watching the teams that have re-invented themselves quickly, for better or worse, and I love seeing what that newness actually looks like. Like here, last Monday, 1s on 1s, in a spirited late-afternoon scrimmage.
Dak Prescott (25 years old, round four, 2016), drops a dime to Swiss-army-knife Tavon Austin (27, traded from Rams, 2018, former eighth overall pick) down the left sideline. On another play, linebacker/modern-science miracle Jaylon Smith (23, round two, 2016) runs stride for stride across the middle with Ezekiel Elliott (23, round one, 2016); as a Prescott pass arrives, so does a big hit from Smith, and the ball skitters away, and Smith celebrates. Later, coach Jason Garrett says, “Our young talent has really emerged this camp.”
The whole scene brought to mind one of the intense drafts I’ve covered in my 34 years covering the league—Dallas, in 2016—and this Yogi-type cliché that has never been more true: Sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make. I said that to Jerry Jones here, and he knew exactly what I was talking about.
If Jones had his way on draft weekend 2016, the Cowboys would have exited the draft with Ezekiel Elliott and Paxton Lynch, the Memphis quarterback who has fallen down the Denver depth chart and may lose his roster spot there in the next month.
Instead, the Cowboys ended up with Ezekiel Elliott, Jaylon Smith, Maliek Collins (a solid rotational defensive lineman) and Dak Prescott. If you ask influential Cowboys, they’ll tell you that—if Smith’s health holds—he and Prescott will fill the two biggest leadership roles here for the next eight to 10 years.
Quick refresher: The Cowboys spent 67 minutes late in the 2016 first round on the phone trying to find a trading partner to move up to draft Lynch. They offered their second and fourth-round picks (34 and 101 overall) to Seattle, at 26 overall in the first round. Denver offered 31 and 94. Seattle asked Dallas to make the offer its second and third-rounders, 34 and 67. Jones agonized. He wanted a quarterback of the future badly, with Tony Romo close to the end. Dallas said no.
Seattle traded with Denver, and Lynch went to Denver. The next day, Jones said to me, “I’m second-guessing the hell out of myself for not giving the three. I have always paid a premium for a premium. So many times my bargains have let me down.” I will never forget the look on Jones’ face. This perpetual optimist, 18 hours after losing Lynch, was pissed off.
No Lynch. The next QB target, Connor Cook, was on the board at the start of round four. Dallas had the second pick in the fourth round and tried to move up with Cleveland, the pick ahead, to get Cook. The Cowboys made two offers. No dice. Oakland then jumped over Dallas, traded with Cleveland, and got Cook. So the Cowboys settled for Prescott with their other fourth-round pick, late in the round.
Two failed trades left Dallas with two cornerstone players.
As the story rolled around in my head watching practice—I swear, just at the same time—Prescott dropped back to throw 20 yards in front of me on the practice field at camp; Smith, pivoting to cover tight end Geoff Swaim, using the damaged leg everyone was studying in this camp, caught up to Swaim, reached across his chest and batted the Prescott pass away. Smith broke up three passes in this practice and was the best defensive player on the field.
In camp, Smith said he believes he can be a better player in Dallas than he was before his injury 32 months ago. The Cowboys are happy with this version of him. “You can run in a straight line all day, but you need to move in spontaneous ways out there, and that’s what we’ve been seeing,” Garrett told me. “Jaylon’s so much more fluid now.”
Jaylon Smith. (Getty Images)
I remember Garrett telling me during the ’16 draft about how excited he was to draft Smith and Prescott for another reason: leadership. Both are young captain types now, Prescott in particular. Garrett told me a story from the pre-draft process the other day that resonates now. Prescott’s draft status was clouded by a DUI charge shortly before the draft, and when he visited Dallas, Garrett drilled him on it.
The coach brought it up a couple times, saying he couldn’t understand why at such an important time in his life that he’d messed up. Finally, the kid, a little exasperated, said to Garrett: “Coach, I don’t know what you want me to say. I made a mistake. I learned from it. It won’t happen again.”
“I look back and I think that was a case of him being the adult, not me,” Garrett said.
Now, with Tony Romo and Jason Witten gone, it’s Prescott’s locker room. At age 25.
“Tony Romo and Jason Witten gave me a good foundation, taught me how to be a leader and wear the star the right way,’’ Prescott told me in camp. “You have to do things the right way. Lead by example. We have such a young team.”
Big duty for Prescott—leading this team while needing to get better as a player. His efficiency regressed last year (from plus-19 touchdown-to-interception differential in 2016 to plus-nine last year), and he says he’s concentrating on being a facilitator this year. With Elliott in the lineup from opening day instead of sidelined by his 2017 suspension, expect Prescott to be more consistent, even with a lesser group of receivers.
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'Hard Knocks' Is Real
Tough training camp so far for former first-round tight end David Njoku of the Cleveland Browns. He had a bad case of the drops, as captured by the NFL Films/HBO cameras in town to shoot “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Cleveland Browns.”
One difference between most of the previous 13 renditions of “Hard Knocks” and this year’s: former series might show footage with a somber voiceover about Njoku’s drops, while the 2018 “Hard Knocks” digs the knife into Njoku. It feels so much more real. In the second hour of the show last week, a downcast Njoku is shown walking off the field when he encounters two defensive mates, defensive linemen Nate Orchard and Chad Thomas.
Orchard: “What up David? Make sure you get on the JUGS, David.”
The JUGS. That’s the machine that pumps footballs at receivers, so receivers can practice the fastballs they’re likely to get from quarterbacks.
Njoku doesn’t appreciate the cattle-prod.
“F— you,” he says to Orchard.
“All right, cool,” Orchard says. “Good talk.”
The hazing continues from Thomas, who says: “You can’t catch a cold butt-ass naked in Alaska.”
David Njoku. (Getty Images)
I have been going to training camps for more than 30 years, and this seems so locker-room, on-field real. I am not a “Hard Knocks” savant, and I admit I have not seen every episode of the previous 13 series. But too often, I believe the show has been a faux reality show.
I won’t tell you the team, but I recall in one recent “Hard Knocks” season sitting in a head coach’s office during training camp, and the coach saying, “Hang on” before we spoke, and then opening a closet door to block the camera in his office, and covering the ambient-sound microphone in the room with a couple of towels, and then talking to me. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But it said to me, We’ll give HBO great visuals and sound, but we’re not going to be altogether real.
Not so this year. In the first two episodes of the five-episode “Hard Knocks with the Cleveland Browns,” I’ve laughed, I’ve almost cried, I’ve said to the TV, “You go, Jarvis Landry!” It’s the best “Hard Knocks” I’ve seen, by far. NFL Films is doing its usual excellent job shooting the show.
The difference is, the 35 NFL Films crew members have found a team and organization of desperadoes who know their jobs and futures are on the line, unlike many of the past teams featured in the series. You can hear it in the voices of the coaches and players and front-office men. Listen to offensive coordinator Todd Haley, as he pleads with the lackadaisical but supremely talented rookie receiver Antonio Calloway:
“Come on. We need you. We need you.This is important.”
And during the Browns’ preseason opener, Haley approached receiver Jarvis Landry, doggedly determined to win, on the sidelines and gave him what sounded like an order. “You need to take kid on,” Haley told Landry. “I don’t care if he’s f—ing living at your house. Can you do that? Larry Fitzgerald would.”
Landry: “Yes sir.”
It’s TV gold. Ken Rodgers is in charge of the project for NFL Films as senior coordinating producer, and he credits the Browns going 0-16 last year for paving the way to a good TV product. ”This is the most urgent situation you could have in the NFL,” Rodgers told me. “The scenes we’re capturing are tinged with that urgency.
The stakes are so high. This is the most urgent training camp ‘Hard Knocks’ has ever filmed, the most urgent team we’ve covered, the most urgent situation we’ve covered. The players and the coaches reflect that. It’s just a very tense time around the team and the organization.”
In show two, quarterback Tyrod Taylor went to coach Hue Jackson on the practice field and told him if he showed parts of the lax practice that day in a team meeting, it’d be a spur to the players. “All you gotta do is show it one time in meetings,” Taylor said. That night, Jackson ranted seriously in the meeting room thusly: “You can’t practice like this and be good! I want more! Unmotivated talent don’t do s—!”
The way the series works is that teams can kill stuff in the show—team officials watch it Monday night or Tuesday morning; the show airs at 10 p.m. ET Tuesday nights through Sept. 4 on HBO—only if it has bearing on competitive football situations. If the Browns, for instance, think Taylor’s cadence would give away some football clues, they could ask it to be scrubbed from the show.
Or if personal or medically sensitive information is passed on somehow, that could be killed. But the personality stuff, or the anger between coaches (there’s been some tension between Haley and other coaches), or the F-bombs that fly between players … it’s fair game. I hear the Browns haven’t had a heavy edit hand at all in the show, feeling that if they’re going to sign in for the show, they’ve got to expect reality.
That’s exactly what “Hard Knocks” has delivered. It’s good TV, and after a few seasons where it wasn’t must-see, it finally is again.
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What I Learned
Arizona rookie quarterback Josh Rosen, on his first training camp as an NFL player:
“I think I see defenses a lot better than I did in college. Pre-snap moreso, because in college it’s like you had to acknowledge the front and coverage—just kind of take it in, snap the ball, then play. It’s like, ‘I think I got cover three, I get the snap and oh, it’s cover two. Well, gotta throw it somewhere.’ Now, I have to actually make checks and change plays according to fronts, linebackers, safeties.
So instead of just seeing it and reacting live and playing, I have to diagnose it, and when you have to diagnose the defense before a play, it means you pretty much have to learn it. Because you can’t just stand up at the line and guess. Processing that information at the line has helped me do more. I think I see defenses a lot more clearly now, and I’m understanding matchups much better.
Josh Rosen. (Getty Images)
“In the NFL, all the positions on defense are starting to blend, it seems to me. Here, [safety] Budda Baker has been at the line of scrimmage on one play, safety the next, and maybe even safety and the line on the same play. [Pass-rusher] Chandler Jones can drop and play linebacker. I’ve seen [defensive end] Rob Nkemdiche almost pick me off a couple times as I tried to throw.
Our linebackers can play safety, safeties play linebacker. I feel like that’s just where the game is heading overall. Everyone’s a hybrid of some sort because for the most part, defenses had to figure out ways to stop Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady. Part of that is all the disguises they put out there. That’s what I’m learning.
“Another thing: Chandler Jones is so fast, so quick, he’s made me shorten my pocket clock. I just don’t have the time I had [at UCLA]. But there’s a problem with that. If you’re consciously trying to play faster, if you think, ‘Be fast, be fast,’ then you’re kind of screwed. It just has to happen. It has to be just in you to react quickly. The second you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta be quicker on this’ rather than just thinking about making the right play, I think the league might not be cut out for you.
“But so far, it’s just been a dream come true, having this as a full-time job. One day in practice I got a little animated and made a play, and Larry Fitzgerald slapped me on the back of the head and was like, “HERE WE GO!” Larry Fitzgerald! Awesome. Scott Quessenberry, my UCLA center, is here, and when I see him, I’m like, ‘Dude, this is pretty cool.’”
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think this is a partial list of the players who did not play in the second preseason game of the year in Los Angeles on Saturday, between the Raiders and the Rams:
Rams: Jared Goff, Robert Woods, Lamarcus Joyner, Aqib Talib, Marcus Peters, Mark Barron, Todd Gurley, Andrew Whitworth, Michael Brockers and Ndamukong Suh
Raiders: Derek Carr, Marshawn Lynch, Bruce Irvin, Kelechi Osemele, Donald Penn, Jordy Nelson, Jared Cook, Amari Cooper and Martavis Bryant
I know a big reason why—because they meet in the first game of the season 23 days after this preseason game. Still, it’s another example of the disgrace of the NFL preseason. Every fan in that stadium (and there were 69,037 there to see the first Raider game in Los Angeles since 1994) should get a refund. Period. Because on the game ticket, the following words were not printed: Warning—the most famous player in this game is E.J. Manuel. When is the NFL going to get serious about addressing the abomination that is paying big prices for preseason football?
2. I think I’m not saying Pat Mahomes is going to be The Answer for Kansas City. It’s training camp, he hasn’t faced adversity, he hasn’t gotten his clock cleaned, etc. But with Tyreek Hill in triple coverage by the Falcons on Friday night in Atlanta, Mahomes reared and fired a strike his dad (former MLB hurler Pat Mahomes) would be proud.
The ball went exactly 70 yards in the air, over the three Falcons defensive backs, and nestled into the arms of Hill at the 5-yard line, and he pranced in for an easy 69-yard touchdown. Not many people can throw 70-yard strikes to beat triple coverage. Can Mahomes do it consistently? We shall see. But now we know why Alex Smith was sent packing to Washington.
View: https://twitter.com/Chiefs/status/1030612114224734209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1030612114224734209&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fprofootballtalk.nbcsports.com%2F2018%2F08%2F20%2Fjon-gruden-raiders-training-camp-fmia-peter-king%2F
3. I think that’s the play of the preseason through two weeks. I’m still shaking my head over it.
4. I think it’d be amazing if, now that presumed starter A.J. McCarron is out with a broken clavicle, presumed third-stringer Nathan Peterman (two summer games: 17 of 20, .850) wins the starting job in Buffalo.
5. I think I forgot how significant a game the late Week 1 Monday nighter is: Rams at Raiders. Student at professor … Sean McVay got hired to be “less than a quality control coach” (his words to me) out of college on Gruden’s last staff in Tampa Bay, and now the teacher will try to beat back the student he might have taught too well. McVay is so into this game that he didn’t play most of his starters in their preseason game Saturday.
He didn’t want to give anything away, even in such a silly setting as a preseason game. Even in a small way, like say the Raiders hearing Jared Goff’s cadence … McVay didn’t want any of that on tape. The Sept. 10 game is in the Black Hole, too. Man, what great theater that’s going to be.
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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/08/20/jon-gruden-raiders-training-camp-fmia-peter-king/
With or Without Laces, Jon Gruden Just Wants to Compete
By Peter King
Getty Images
NAPA, Calif. — “No-lace football now!”
No-lace football. Anybody ever hear of that?
Jon Gruden has. When the drill started near midfield halfway through a Raider training camp practice one day last week, Gruden was fired up. “Let’s see what you got, Derek Carr!” he said. Derek Carr, getting ready to start the drill, had a big smile. He looked fired up.
A ballboy brought out a black Raiders ballbag with a dozen NFL footballs. What happened next was almost too fast to notice what was going on. Carr took six shoveled snaps from a ballboy in the span of 11 seconds and threw right, left, right, left, snap-way-high-and throw-right, and left. As happens often in a game, Carr had no time to center the ball in his hand to find the laces—he had to throw the moment he got it in his right hand.
And you noticed the color of the tight spiral was totally brown. Usually when you watch a spiraled throw, you see the fast rotation of the ball with the white laces flashing every, whatever, fifteenth of a second. Not here. Solid brown.
There were no laces on these dozen footballs.
That’s weird. It’s sort of Gruden. I’d come here to judge whether the 55-year-old Gruden—more sedate, a bit more thoughtful, with a voice that didn’t dominate practice the way the 38-year-old Gruden did the last time he was on a Raider practice field—was the same intenso guy who ran the Raiders a long time ago. Did his decade out of football dull his ardor for the game?
He’s still the sneering, calculating Gruden, I think. He does get up an hour later in the morning, but I give him credit for admitting he’s not the up-at-3:17 a.m. nut job he used to be.
Whether all that matters when the games start is another matter. But it’s a fun show out here in cabernet country.
This column was going to start at 5 a.m. sharp on the first floor of the Napa Marriott, the summer home of the Raiders, in the video den of Jon Gruden. But I took a sharp turn after seeing practice. First reason: On a quiet day in Napa, with only a handful of fans in the bleachers on either side of the fields out the backdoor of the Marriott, Gruden’s voice could not be heard for the first 51 minutes of practice.
He watched, he quietly taught. Later in practice, it was the No-Lace Football Drill. Shovel snaps, some of them purposely lousy, with six straight very fast throws per quarterback, using wall-to-wall brown footballs.
“That’s pretty Gruden right there,” Carr said. “Good idea. He had me do that at the ESPN QB camp a few years ago too. You get used to throwing without the laces. I’d guess 40 percent of my throws in college were not with the laces. Get it quick, pressure, get it out. I like practicing it with speed.”
Gruden: “All these ESPN shows we did with the quarterbacks—60 shows, I think. The TV copy from their college games … quarterbacks in the shotgun, and their fingers aren’t on the laces. Hardly ever. So I’ve said if you’re going to practice something in a drill, it’s got to be based on two things: what happens the most in a game, and what a guy needs to work on.
Well, if we’re going to throw the ball with your fingers not on the laces, we better get some balls with no laces, and we better practice using balls with no laces, and we better practice at the speed that they’re throwing with no laces in a game. You got a coach there telling the quarterback where to throw: ‘Left, right, right, bad snap, low snap, left, right.’ So that’s what we do. We gotta make these quarterbacks mentally quicker every day, gotta get them to be quicker with the arm and the ball.”
This was a continuation of what we talked about at 5 in the morning, when Gruden told me: “If there’s a better way of doing something in football, I’m gonna try and find out and apply and incorporate it into what we do. I’m not a big fan of the GPSs and the sleep bracelets. I don’t believe you wear [virtual reality] goggles in quarterback meetings and get 3D reps. I still think it’s about hard work. I think you need to go out there, practice it full speed.”
No one knows how this chemistry experiment between Gruden and owner Mark Davis and Oakland and Las Vegas will work out. The Gruden I saw for a day last week isn’t the in-practice foghorn he used to be. “Passionate, intense, but probably a little quieter,” said quarterback Derek Carr.
But in how Gruden acts, how he works and how he installs drills and plays and innovations like the no-lace ball drill, he looks like the guy looking for any edge he can find to beat the new kids on the NFL block—ironically, the ones he birthed in professional football.
Think of what you must think if you’re Gruden, looking at the NFL landscape. By the time you were 39, you’d made the playoffs three years in a row as a head coach and won a Super Bowl; you were an offensive phenom. Then you coached your last six years in Tampa and fell to earth a bit—zero playoff wins, you get dismissed, and you take a job in the TV booth that was never really all you. You always wanted to come back.
You also must think this: In 2004, you hired 24-year-old Kyle Shanahan for his first NFL job as a low-level offensive assistant in Tampa. In 2008, you hired 22-year-old Sean McVay for his first NFL job as a low-level offensive assistant in Tampa. Now they’re the offensive phenoms.
At 31, McVay took over the Rams last year and turned them from the league’s 32nd-rated offense to number one in one season, and the Rams won the division. At 37, Shanahan (“a genius,” Tony Romo calls him) looks to be set in San Francisco with Jimmy Garoppolo at quarterback so the 49ers can be a force for years.
You’re Gruden, and you started them on their road to phenomness, and now everyone’s looking at you. Can Gruden still do it? Have the students passed the teacher, and can the teacher be as good as he was a generation ago?
We’ll see. Week 1: McVay at Gruden. Week 9: Gruden at Shanahan.
“The one thing I would say that’s so different for Jon is, I don’t really look at it as he’s been out of football for nine years,” McVay told me last week. “I look at it as he’s had a different lens into the game. He’s always been preparing himself to use that platform as an advantage so when he did come back, like getting to know all the quarterbacks from his QB Camp, he’d be ready.
His up-close look at the different ways people practice from traveling around doing the Monday night games is valuable exposure. We’re all a product of our experiences and the environments you’re placed in. He’s been exposed to all of them. I’ve met with him throughout the course of the last decade, talking ball. I’m still always learning from this guy.
He’s sent us notes, using extra footage from his Monday night telecasts, to help us have better teaching tapes because of the angles that you’re getting from all of the cameras. He’s going to do a great job.”
“I just want to compete again,” Gruden said, back in his Marriott lair. “I’m proud of Shanahan, proud of my brother [Washington coach Jay Gruden], proud of McVay.”
“You used to be them,” I said. “The brilliant offensive guy.”
“Yeah,” Gruden said. ”They’re good. They’re really good. Unfortunately, I’ve got to get in the ring with them now. I know they want to get after me. I guess I could say the feeling’s mutual. I want to beat them too.”
Getty Images
Staccato, quick-hit Gruden:
• On his coaching style at 55: “I’m trying to match the work ethic that I put forth 15 years ago, whatever it was, when I was here. That’s number one. You have to get everybody on board. I haven’t seen my wife in like three weeks; she’s got to be on board. It’s hard saying goodbye to my mom and dad in Florida. I miss them. Being honest with you. I kind of felt sad about that because I like looking out for them. But I’ve got to do this. Time’s flying.”
• On the changes in football since he last coached in 2008: “I don’t like what we’ve done to the profession, personally. I don’t like the CBA. I don’t like regulating hard work. By god, if a guy wants to come here in April and learn his plays? Wants to go out there and watch tape with me? I think he ought to be able to do that. He wants to come in and use our billion dollar facility? He ought to be able to use that. Really disappoints me to no end. For players, this is their time in life to make a team, make a profession, make some money, have some fun. I don’t like it. Are the rules better, or are they just more rules?”
• On what he wants this team to be: “You gotta have guys that would jump over the water coolers to cover a kick when the game’s on the line. You gotta have guys that behind the scenes are always thinking about the game, that love it. We needed some passion. We needed more passion I think in this locker room. I think we needed more versatility. I hope we’ve got that. We’ve had one winning team here in [15 seasons]. It’s not good enough.”
• On his reported 10-year, $100-million contract, and a football coach making $100 million: “I’m not making $100 million, just so you know. Well, I never thought Tom Cruise, never thought his movies were any good but he’s making plenty of money. There’s a lot of things that I don’t understand. No disrespect to Tom Cruise. I’m sure he’s a great actor.
But you know what? You just go about your life as hard as you can. You try to find something you love and you do the best you can at it. I never got into coaching for the money. I got into coaching because I wanted to be a quarterback coach. What the salary cap has become, what free agency has become—it’s amazing.”
• On what he took from Al Davis, who traded him in 2002 to Tampa Bay: “I got a lot of respect for him, obviously. A lot of people think we clashed. We didn’t clash, really. Yeah, he traded me. But he fast-tracked me. He beat me up at times, and I probably needed beating up. I was probably in over my head when I first signed up for this job.”
• On Derek Carr: “There’s no question that he’s got more talent than anybody I’ve ever coached. He’s athletic. He can make any throw you can imagine. He loves it. If you’re a Raider fan, get a ticket, because he is really fun to watch. He has really done a great job at this camp. There’s really not anything he can’t do.”
We did have an interesting exchange about the Tuck Rule game. Raider Trivia: What was the last game Jon Gruden coached for Oakland? It was the playoff game in Foxboro in the 2001 season, when Charles Woodson stripped Tom Brady and in effect would have all but clinched the game … but the call was reversed, with ref Walt Coleman claiming the “tuck rule” should have been called, making the aborted Brady “throw” an incomplete pass. The Patriots kicked the tying field goal to send the game to overtime, then won on another field goal, and went on to win their first Super Bowl of five in the Belichick/Brady Era.
Smoke out of Gruden’s ears, 17-and-a-half years later.
“That’s probably a big reason I’m never going to be a fan of instant replay,” Gruden said. “Instant replay was [meant] to correct an obvious wrong. I don’t know how they worded it. But they shouldn’t have overturned that play. That’s a complete joke. Where’s the tuck rule today, Peter? It’s not even in the game. When you overturn a play for a rule like that, that’s no way to lose a game. Especially a playoff game.
“It is what it is, as they say today.”
That’s about it.
“Anything else you want to say?” I asked as my time ticked down. It was 5:19. I could tell he was itching for me, respectfully, to scram.
“I don’t want to say anything,” he said. “I just want to work. We’re a 6-10 team.”
Time to think of some more things like no-lace practice periods. He knows he’s got phenoms to keep up with, and to pass.
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Numbers Game
No good team shook up the roster in the offseason as much as the Rams. How’d they do? We can’t know with finality until the fate of Aaron Donald has been decided. My sense is the great defensive tackle, a camp holdout, will not play on the contract (one year, $6.89 million) remaining. My money is on the Rams and Donald getting a deal done by Labor Day, but that’s just my gut.
Without factoring in the Donald deal, let’s examine what the Rams lost and gained this off-season—and whether they’re better off for it.
GONE
Robert Quinn, DE: 1 year, $12.93 million (Traded to Dolphins)
Alec Ogletree, LB: 4 years, $32 million (Traded to Giants)
Sammy Watkins, WR: 3 years, $48 million (Signed by Chiefs)
Trumaine Johnson, CB: 5 years, $72.5 million (Signed by Jets)
Tavon Austin, WR/Ret: 1 year, $3 million (Traded to Cowboys)
Total: 5 players, 14 years, $168.43 milion
ARRIVED/STAYED
Marcus Peters, CB: 2 years, $11.1 million
Aqib Talib, CB: 2 years, $19 million
Ndamukong Suh, DT: 1 year, $14 million
Brandin Cooks, WR: 6 years, $85 million
Lamarcus Joyner, S: 1 year, $11.28 million
Todd Gurley, RB: 6 years, $69.45 million
Total: 6 players, 18 years, $209.83 million
How’d they do? Cooks is better for the Sean McVay offense than Watkins or Austin; he can play all three receiver spots in the Rams offense. Peters and Talib are short-term gains and give defensive coordinator Wade Phillips two potential shutdown corners—though both are incendiary players who may have an incident or two during the season.
Suh is 31 but still a major disruptive force inside. The Rams weren’t going to re-sign Quinn after this season, and he’s missed 16 games due to injury in the last three years. Phillips signed off on the loss of Ogletree, wanting the cornerbacks instead; they’re more valuable in his defense.
And this summer, the Rams have locked in ace running back Todd Gurley for his age-24-through-29 seasons, presumably his six prime years as a runner, at an average cost of $11.6 million a year.
All in all, if GM Les Snead gets the Donald deal done by opening day, the Rams will have managed a top-heavy roster very well this offseason. But signing Donald … it’s a very big, and crucial, if.
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Reining In Replay
The new NFL rules analyst for NBC Sports, Terry McAulay, tells me he thinks there will be a major change in how replay is adjudicated this year, and it’s the one element of 2018 officiating that has gotten “zero press.” McAulay said: “The league doesn’t want those technical reversals that we saw over and over last year. Replay is for clear and obvious errors, and that was not the case last year.”
Oh, I know that. The Kelvin Benjamin overturn of a touchdown that certainly was not indisputable wither way was a black mark on a replay system run amok last year. Vice president of officiating Al Riveron went way beyond reasonable in his overturns of several calls, none worse than the Benjamin play.
Now, after the Benjamin TD in the corner of the end zone in Week 16 at New England was overturned, look at this call that wasn’t overturned, or even questioned, Saturday in the Rams-Raiders game. Tell me that the referee shouldn’t have examined this one, ruled as a fumble by the crew on the field, in consultation with the officiating command center in New York.
View: https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1030918010301689856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1030918010301689856&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fprofootballtalk.nbcsports.com%2F2018%2F08%2F20%2Fjon-gruden-raiders-training-camp-fmia-peter-king%2F
“We knew the league was going to be more circumspect on replay this year, but to go this extent—this fumble wasn’t even stopped to be reviewed—is a big change,” McAulay said. “With my new job at NBC, I’m going to be much more cautious about saying a call should be reversed. Why have replay if it’s not going to reverse this play?”
Next week: I plan to address the leading-with-the-helmet hits now being flagged in the preseason, with McAulay’s thoughts and mine, and those of players from the preseason trail. It needs some space, and some thought, and I’ll give it to you next Monday.
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The Cowboys, Remade
OXNARD, Calif. —You know what I love doing at training camps? I love watching the teams that have re-invented themselves quickly, for better or worse, and I love seeing what that newness actually looks like. Like here, last Monday, 1s on 1s, in a spirited late-afternoon scrimmage.
Dak Prescott (25 years old, round four, 2016), drops a dime to Swiss-army-knife Tavon Austin (27, traded from Rams, 2018, former eighth overall pick) down the left sideline. On another play, linebacker/modern-science miracle Jaylon Smith (23, round two, 2016) runs stride for stride across the middle with Ezekiel Elliott (23, round one, 2016); as a Prescott pass arrives, so does a big hit from Smith, and the ball skitters away, and Smith celebrates. Later, coach Jason Garrett says, “Our young talent has really emerged this camp.”
The whole scene brought to mind one of the intense drafts I’ve covered in my 34 years covering the league—Dallas, in 2016—and this Yogi-type cliché that has never been more true: Sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make. I said that to Jerry Jones here, and he knew exactly what I was talking about.
If Jones had his way on draft weekend 2016, the Cowboys would have exited the draft with Ezekiel Elliott and Paxton Lynch, the Memphis quarterback who has fallen down the Denver depth chart and may lose his roster spot there in the next month.
Instead, the Cowboys ended up with Ezekiel Elliott, Jaylon Smith, Maliek Collins (a solid rotational defensive lineman) and Dak Prescott. If you ask influential Cowboys, they’ll tell you that—if Smith’s health holds—he and Prescott will fill the two biggest leadership roles here for the next eight to 10 years.
Quick refresher: The Cowboys spent 67 minutes late in the 2016 first round on the phone trying to find a trading partner to move up to draft Lynch. They offered their second and fourth-round picks (34 and 101 overall) to Seattle, at 26 overall in the first round. Denver offered 31 and 94. Seattle asked Dallas to make the offer its second and third-rounders, 34 and 67. Jones agonized. He wanted a quarterback of the future badly, with Tony Romo close to the end. Dallas said no.
Seattle traded with Denver, and Lynch went to Denver. The next day, Jones said to me, “I’m second-guessing the hell out of myself for not giving the three. I have always paid a premium for a premium. So many times my bargains have let me down.” I will never forget the look on Jones’ face. This perpetual optimist, 18 hours after losing Lynch, was pissed off.
No Lynch. The next QB target, Connor Cook, was on the board at the start of round four. Dallas had the second pick in the fourth round and tried to move up with Cleveland, the pick ahead, to get Cook. The Cowboys made two offers. No dice. Oakland then jumped over Dallas, traded with Cleveland, and got Cook. So the Cowboys settled for Prescott with their other fourth-round pick, late in the round.
Two failed trades left Dallas with two cornerstone players.
As the story rolled around in my head watching practice—I swear, just at the same time—Prescott dropped back to throw 20 yards in front of me on the practice field at camp; Smith, pivoting to cover tight end Geoff Swaim, using the damaged leg everyone was studying in this camp, caught up to Swaim, reached across his chest and batted the Prescott pass away. Smith broke up three passes in this practice and was the best defensive player on the field.
In camp, Smith said he believes he can be a better player in Dallas than he was before his injury 32 months ago. The Cowboys are happy with this version of him. “You can run in a straight line all day, but you need to move in spontaneous ways out there, and that’s what we’ve been seeing,” Garrett told me. “Jaylon’s so much more fluid now.”
Jaylon Smith. (Getty Images)
I remember Garrett telling me during the ’16 draft about how excited he was to draft Smith and Prescott for another reason: leadership. Both are young captain types now, Prescott in particular. Garrett told me a story from the pre-draft process the other day that resonates now. Prescott’s draft status was clouded by a DUI charge shortly before the draft, and when he visited Dallas, Garrett drilled him on it.
The coach brought it up a couple times, saying he couldn’t understand why at such an important time in his life that he’d messed up. Finally, the kid, a little exasperated, said to Garrett: “Coach, I don’t know what you want me to say. I made a mistake. I learned from it. It won’t happen again.”
“I look back and I think that was a case of him being the adult, not me,” Garrett said.
Now, with Tony Romo and Jason Witten gone, it’s Prescott’s locker room. At age 25.
“Tony Romo and Jason Witten gave me a good foundation, taught me how to be a leader and wear the star the right way,’’ Prescott told me in camp. “You have to do things the right way. Lead by example. We have such a young team.”
Big duty for Prescott—leading this team while needing to get better as a player. His efficiency regressed last year (from plus-19 touchdown-to-interception differential in 2016 to plus-nine last year), and he says he’s concentrating on being a facilitator this year. With Elliott in the lineup from opening day instead of sidelined by his 2017 suspension, expect Prescott to be more consistent, even with a lesser group of receivers.
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'Hard Knocks' Is Real
Tough training camp so far for former first-round tight end David Njoku of the Cleveland Browns. He had a bad case of the drops, as captured by the NFL Films/HBO cameras in town to shoot “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Cleveland Browns.”
One difference between most of the previous 13 renditions of “Hard Knocks” and this year’s: former series might show footage with a somber voiceover about Njoku’s drops, while the 2018 “Hard Knocks” digs the knife into Njoku. It feels so much more real. In the second hour of the show last week, a downcast Njoku is shown walking off the field when he encounters two defensive mates, defensive linemen Nate Orchard and Chad Thomas.
Orchard: “What up David? Make sure you get on the JUGS, David.”
The JUGS. That’s the machine that pumps footballs at receivers, so receivers can practice the fastballs they’re likely to get from quarterbacks.
Njoku doesn’t appreciate the cattle-prod.
“F— you,” he says to Orchard.
“All right, cool,” Orchard says. “Good talk.”
The hazing continues from Thomas, who says: “You can’t catch a cold butt-ass naked in Alaska.”
David Njoku. (Getty Images)
I have been going to training camps for more than 30 years, and this seems so locker-room, on-field real. I am not a “Hard Knocks” savant, and I admit I have not seen every episode of the previous 13 series. But too often, I believe the show has been a faux reality show.
I won’t tell you the team, but I recall in one recent “Hard Knocks” season sitting in a head coach’s office during training camp, and the coach saying, “Hang on” before we spoke, and then opening a closet door to block the camera in his office, and covering the ambient-sound microphone in the room with a couple of towels, and then talking to me. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But it said to me, We’ll give HBO great visuals and sound, but we’re not going to be altogether real.
Not so this year. In the first two episodes of the five-episode “Hard Knocks with the Cleveland Browns,” I’ve laughed, I’ve almost cried, I’ve said to the TV, “You go, Jarvis Landry!” It’s the best “Hard Knocks” I’ve seen, by far. NFL Films is doing its usual excellent job shooting the show.
The difference is, the 35 NFL Films crew members have found a team and organization of desperadoes who know their jobs and futures are on the line, unlike many of the past teams featured in the series. You can hear it in the voices of the coaches and players and front-office men. Listen to offensive coordinator Todd Haley, as he pleads with the lackadaisical but supremely talented rookie receiver Antonio Calloway:
“Come on. We need you. We need you.This is important.”
And during the Browns’ preseason opener, Haley approached receiver Jarvis Landry, doggedly determined to win, on the sidelines and gave him what sounded like an order. “You need to take kid on,” Haley told Landry. “I don’t care if he’s f—ing living at your house. Can you do that? Larry Fitzgerald would.”
Landry: “Yes sir.”
It’s TV gold. Ken Rodgers is in charge of the project for NFL Films as senior coordinating producer, and he credits the Browns going 0-16 last year for paving the way to a good TV product. ”This is the most urgent situation you could have in the NFL,” Rodgers told me. “The scenes we’re capturing are tinged with that urgency.
The stakes are so high. This is the most urgent training camp ‘Hard Knocks’ has ever filmed, the most urgent team we’ve covered, the most urgent situation we’ve covered. The players and the coaches reflect that. It’s just a very tense time around the team and the organization.”
In show two, quarterback Tyrod Taylor went to coach Hue Jackson on the practice field and told him if he showed parts of the lax practice that day in a team meeting, it’d be a spur to the players. “All you gotta do is show it one time in meetings,” Taylor said. That night, Jackson ranted seriously in the meeting room thusly: “You can’t practice like this and be good! I want more! Unmotivated talent don’t do s—!”
The way the series works is that teams can kill stuff in the show—team officials watch it Monday night or Tuesday morning; the show airs at 10 p.m. ET Tuesday nights through Sept. 4 on HBO—only if it has bearing on competitive football situations. If the Browns, for instance, think Taylor’s cadence would give away some football clues, they could ask it to be scrubbed from the show.
Or if personal or medically sensitive information is passed on somehow, that could be killed. But the personality stuff, or the anger between coaches (there’s been some tension between Haley and other coaches), or the F-bombs that fly between players … it’s fair game. I hear the Browns haven’t had a heavy edit hand at all in the show, feeling that if they’re going to sign in for the show, they’ve got to expect reality.
That’s exactly what “Hard Knocks” has delivered. It’s good TV, and after a few seasons where it wasn’t must-see, it finally is again.
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What I Learned
Arizona rookie quarterback Josh Rosen, on his first training camp as an NFL player:
“I think I see defenses a lot better than I did in college. Pre-snap moreso, because in college it’s like you had to acknowledge the front and coverage—just kind of take it in, snap the ball, then play. It’s like, ‘I think I got cover three, I get the snap and oh, it’s cover two. Well, gotta throw it somewhere.’ Now, I have to actually make checks and change plays according to fronts, linebackers, safeties.
So instead of just seeing it and reacting live and playing, I have to diagnose it, and when you have to diagnose the defense before a play, it means you pretty much have to learn it. Because you can’t just stand up at the line and guess. Processing that information at the line has helped me do more. I think I see defenses a lot more clearly now, and I’m understanding matchups much better.
Josh Rosen. (Getty Images)
“In the NFL, all the positions on defense are starting to blend, it seems to me. Here, [safety] Budda Baker has been at the line of scrimmage on one play, safety the next, and maybe even safety and the line on the same play. [Pass-rusher] Chandler Jones can drop and play linebacker. I’ve seen [defensive end] Rob Nkemdiche almost pick me off a couple times as I tried to throw.
Our linebackers can play safety, safeties play linebacker. I feel like that’s just where the game is heading overall. Everyone’s a hybrid of some sort because for the most part, defenses had to figure out ways to stop Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady. Part of that is all the disguises they put out there. That’s what I’m learning.
“Another thing: Chandler Jones is so fast, so quick, he’s made me shorten my pocket clock. I just don’t have the time I had [at UCLA]. But there’s a problem with that. If you’re consciously trying to play faster, if you think, ‘Be fast, be fast,’ then you’re kind of screwed. It just has to happen. It has to be just in you to react quickly. The second you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta be quicker on this’ rather than just thinking about making the right play, I think the league might not be cut out for you.
“But so far, it’s just been a dream come true, having this as a full-time job. One day in practice I got a little animated and made a play, and Larry Fitzgerald slapped me on the back of the head and was like, “HERE WE GO!” Larry Fitzgerald! Awesome. Scott Quessenberry, my UCLA center, is here, and when I see him, I’m like, ‘Dude, this is pretty cool.’”
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View: https://twitter.com/Andy_Benoit/status/1029387921889972224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1029387921889972224&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fprofootballtalk.nbcsports.com%2F2018%2F08%2F20%2Fjon-gruden-raiders-training-camp-fmia-peter-king%2F
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think this is a partial list of the players who did not play in the second preseason game of the year in Los Angeles on Saturday, between the Raiders and the Rams:
Rams: Jared Goff, Robert Woods, Lamarcus Joyner, Aqib Talib, Marcus Peters, Mark Barron, Todd Gurley, Andrew Whitworth, Michael Brockers and Ndamukong Suh
Raiders: Derek Carr, Marshawn Lynch, Bruce Irvin, Kelechi Osemele, Donald Penn, Jordy Nelson, Jared Cook, Amari Cooper and Martavis Bryant
I know a big reason why—because they meet in the first game of the season 23 days after this preseason game. Still, it’s another example of the disgrace of the NFL preseason. Every fan in that stadium (and there were 69,037 there to see the first Raider game in Los Angeles since 1994) should get a refund. Period. Because on the game ticket, the following words were not printed: Warning—the most famous player in this game is E.J. Manuel. When is the NFL going to get serious about addressing the abomination that is paying big prices for preseason football?
2. I think I’m not saying Pat Mahomes is going to be The Answer for Kansas City. It’s training camp, he hasn’t faced adversity, he hasn’t gotten his clock cleaned, etc. But with Tyreek Hill in triple coverage by the Falcons on Friday night in Atlanta, Mahomes reared and fired a strike his dad (former MLB hurler Pat Mahomes) would be proud.
The ball went exactly 70 yards in the air, over the three Falcons defensive backs, and nestled into the arms of Hill at the 5-yard line, and he pranced in for an easy 69-yard touchdown. Not many people can throw 70-yard strikes to beat triple coverage. Can Mahomes do it consistently? We shall see. But now we know why Alex Smith was sent packing to Washington.
View: https://twitter.com/Chiefs/status/1030612114224734209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1030612114224734209&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fprofootballtalk.nbcsports.com%2F2018%2F08%2F20%2Fjon-gruden-raiders-training-camp-fmia-peter-king%2F
3. I think that’s the play of the preseason through two weeks. I’m still shaking my head over it.
4. I think it’d be amazing if, now that presumed starter A.J. McCarron is out with a broken clavicle, presumed third-stringer Nathan Peterman (two summer games: 17 of 20, .850) wins the starting job in Buffalo.
5. I think I forgot how significant a game the late Week 1 Monday nighter is: Rams at Raiders. Student at professor … Sean McVay got hired to be “less than a quality control coach” (his words to me) out of college on Gruden’s last staff in Tampa Bay, and now the teacher will try to beat back the student he might have taught too well. McVay is so into this game that he didn’t play most of his starters in their preseason game Saturday.
He didn’t want to give anything away, even in such a silly setting as a preseason game. Even in a small way, like say the Raiders hearing Jared Goff’s cadence … McVay didn’t want any of that on tape. The Sept. 10 game is in the Black Hole, too. Man, what great theater that’s going to be.
