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Falcons head coach
Dan Reeves
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A pox on training camps, I say. They are too long. Arguably, they should not exist in
any form. They no longer are relevant. Off with them.
Well, if teams want to get guys together for a week or so before the regular season
starts, that would be all right. But to continue this practice of assembling grown men for
a prolonged period at some out-of-the way site and sequestering them as if they had
committed criminal acts is ludicrous.
What of their wives? Their families? What have these men done to be caged up in this
manner? Permit me to serve as a committee of one to free the pro football player. I side
with Bud Grant, who had a greater liking for duck blinds than training procedures and
whose practice it was to get the Vikings in and out of training camps — quickly.
Once, training camps made sense. In a preparation sense, they were all there was for
NFL teams. Men came to them to condition themselves, to work the winter’s beer out of
their bones. The camps represented a beginning. Now, they are a continuation. Teams’
preparations have been proceeding almost nonstop for months.
No one is more aware of this than Falcons head coach Dan Reeves, 58, the league’s
senior head coach. When Reeves gathers the Falcons on July 25 in Greenville, S.C., he will
begin his 22nd season as an NFL head coach. As a player and coach, he has had a continuous
association with the league since 1965, when he joined the Cowboys as an undrafted rookie
out of South Carolina.
In that year there were 14 NFL teams, each of which had 20 draft selections. In the
draft, nobody selected Reeves, a college quarterback.
"I was a free agent back when being a free agent meant really being free,"
Reeves remembered. Only two teams offered him training-camp opportunities. One was the
Cowboys, the other the Chargers. The Dallas club would give him a $1,000 signing bonus and
a contract for $11,000. The Chargers’ offer was for a signing bonus of $750 and a
$12,000 salary.
Reeves chose Dallas in the thinking, he said, that the NFL was the more secure league,
the American Football League then in only its sixth season. In training camp, Cowboys head
coach Tom Landry kept moving Reeves from position to position before he finally was
settled at running back.
"I can remember I was scared to death," Reeves said. In their final preseason
game, the Cowboys were to engage the Bears in Tulsa. Dallas had 47 players and could take
only 43 into the regular season.
"When I found out I had made it, I was so excited," Reeves remembered.
In the season’s second week, the Cowboys cut a player. "I said, ‘Golly,
I didn’t know they cut somebody once the season has started,’ " Reeves
said. But he was able to hang around. He had eight seasons with the Cowboys as a player
who was useful both as a rusher and a receiver. For six additional seasons he would serve
as a Landry coaching lieutenant, eventually becoming the Cowboys’ offensive
coordinator.
In 1981, Reeves’ run as a head coach began. Twelve seasons in Denver. Four with
the Giants. Now six with the Falcons.
That’s a lot of training camps, a lot of grass drills and getting up too early in
the morning and guys being told to come to the coach’s office — and bring their
playbooks.
When Reeves arrived in the NFL, strength programs were not part of a team’s scheme
of things. Teams could have as many candidates in a training camp as they wished. The
Cowboys made it a practice to round up as many as 100 undrafted rookies. Camps were not
preceded by minicamps. Free agency had not become a reality. There was no salary cap.
For how matters have changed, examine Reeves’ schedule for the Falcons. The team
had a passing camp that concluded on July 2. On July 11-12, there was a two-day minicamp.
On July 24, rookies and veterans are to report to the club’s training site at Furman
University.
"Competition dictates a lot of it," Reeves said. When one coach plans some
sort of exercise, another coach will match it. Teams, meantime, have gotten into paying
players to do offseason nip-ups. "But the biggest change is the numbers," Reeves
said. For every team but Houston, no more than 80 players can be in a training camp (with
athletes who have been performing in NFL Europe the exception). The Texas expansionists
can screen 90 players. Additionally, when their rivals are cutting to 65 players, the
Texans can retain 70.
"It used to be that you were blocking and tackling all the time," Reeves
said. "You can’t do that any more. It’s almost like the mode you are in
after the season starts."
Training camps clearly are not as meaningful as they were when they were the only means
of preparing for a season.
"But I still think you can accomplish an awful lot in a training camp,"
Reeves argued. "Two-a-days tell you a lot about a person’s character. You also
need that timing you can develop. And the camps give you a chance to develop young
players."
Because of the salary cap, every team these days has to fit a number of young players
onto its rolls. Having once been a rookie free agent, Reeves said one of the joys he takes
in a training camp is seeking out other unheralded rookies.
Reeves said he likes his current squad, which is coming off a 7-9 season. "I think
we’ve got a good chance," he judged. He accepts, he said, that his side could be
inconsistent offensively, in that it is going with a second-year quarterback, Michael
Vick. To make matters easier for Vick, Reeves has altered his play-calling system to a
simpler, digit-oriented one.
"Everything you can do that makes a quarterback more comfortable is helpful,"
Reeves said.
On to training camp. These things are still out there. In my mind, they serve mostly to
titillate fans and to give coaches practice in coaching. They aren’t really
necessary.
Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for
PFW since its inception in 1967. |
