Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Rams Huddle › some teams take an altered approach to their rookie minicamps, a la Fisher
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May 9, 2016 at 8:06 pm #43741
znModeratorJaguars, Dolphins follow growing trend in NFL rookie minicamps
Jeff Darlington
JACKSONVILLE and DAVIE, Fla. — Inside the underbelly of EverBank Field, along a dimly lit hallway that serves as the main corridor for the Jacksonville Jaguars’ day-to-day football operations, new linebacker Myles Jack and head coach Gus Bradley walked together after a workout Saturday, making general small talk.
Suddenly, Jack stopped in front of a door that he thought to be his destination.
“Is this the locker room?” he asked Bradley.
It wasn’t — he’d overshot it by just a few feet. But that’s not the point. This is: Despite all of the public chatter about the NFL’s newest crop of players, all of the expectations and wonders and projections, all of the exposure, there is still one important point that we often overlook about the future of every rookie.
It has to start somewhere.
“The foundation is being set,” Bradley said later, speaking with NFL.com.
This is among the myriad reasons why many teams, like the Jaguars and the Dolphins this weekend, decided to take an altered approach to their rookie minicamps, one that more closely mirrors what the Rams have done under Jeff Fisher for the last several seasons. No longer are they pressing the pedal to the metal.
In a league that often feels like an arm’s race — where a weekend with the rookies has long meant an opportunity to jump-start their careers with more practice and more workouts — the Jaguars and Dolphins decided to turn the last few days into an orientation that loaded new charges with mental fuel rather than overwhelming them with physical exertion.
No doubt, it would be absurd to call it a mere coincidence that Jacksonville is changing its approach one year after No. 3 overall pick Dante Fowler Jr. tore his ACL just a few minutes into his first practice of rookie minicamp. This clearly has something to do with that. So in some sense, yes, it is a reaction.
But Jaguars staffers, including Bradley, were careful this past weekend to define this decision as a proactive one, as well, something that likely was on the horizon regardless of Fowler’s harsh setback.
“We saw it happen,” Bradley said of Fowler’s injury. “So we addressed things and we said, ‘Alright, what would we do differently?’ But this was more of a bigger picture that we were looking at. We actually talked about changing things before last year’s rookie minicamp.
“So I think this is just a natural progression. We felt like, You know what, let’s try this.”
The Jaguars actually still put their players on the field to a greater degree than the Dolphins. Jacksonville still ran through certain football drills, just without any of the intensity, contact or time devotion of past years.
“This year, we really decided to really slow things down, kind of anticipating that the rookies have been really fast-paced the last three months, really,” Bradley said. “So we took this opportunity to slow things down, get a little bit more one-on-one teaching, kind of show them the Jags’ way, how we do things.”
The Dolphins are subscribing to a similar mindset — one that was indeed inspired by Fisher’s Rams, first-year head coach Adam Gase acknowledges. While Gase’s rookies might not be able to compare this new approach against anything else — they are, after all, new to the NFL — the decision clearly made sense to them.
“It’s been a tedious process,” Dolphins rookie running back Kenyan Drake said. “After the national championship game, I hit the ground running. I started training for the combine at IMG in Bradenton, and after the combine, I had to get ready for my pro day [at Alabama]. From there, I had to start flying around to different teams.”
In other words, if you think the rookie season sounds like a grind, it pales in comparison to what they’ve endured for the past six months.
“This weekend gives our bodies a chance to recover from the grind up to this point,” Drake said. “We can focus on the playbook, recover our bodies and get ready for when the veterans do come in.”
So what did the days entail? Well, it isn’t exactly a vacation. Rookies in Miami still endured everything from one-on-one meetings with assistant coaches to blood testing to installation of the playbook to stretching sessions. But it also included the little things, like learning about the strength and conditioning program.
Gase also scheduled speakers to provide messages to the group. For instance, on Friday, former All-Pro linebacker Zach Thomas spoke to the rookies about what it means to be an NFL player and how to be successful on and off the field.
No doubt, though, the most important aspect of this weekend remains preparing the rookies for what to expect when the veterans report.
“I’ve got to know what I’m doing on the field before I can actually do it,” Dolphins rookie cornerback Xavien Howard said. “Preparing mentally is going to be very important. I don’t want to be lost when the veterans get here, so I’m glad they’re getting us ready this way.”
From avoiding injuries to orientating players to team facilities, it certainly makes sense to give rookies a full weekend to adjust. So what is the potential downside? It seems fairly minimal. Among the discussions that the Jaguars had, they realized they probably wouldn’t get a great look at the players invited to rookie minicamps on a tryout basis.
“In the past, you bring in so-called tryout players, and you may find one or two players that you can bring on to your team through that,” Bradley said.
Cold as it might sound, protecting the major investments certainly seems to outweigh the ability to sift through a batch of tryout players. Plus, there will be other opportunities to get glimpses of tryout players in veteran minicamps, given the 90-man rosters that teams can carry in the offseason.
So ultimately, it appears the Dolphins and Jaguars came out of the weekend satisfied with the orientation their players experienced. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if other teams pick up a similar philosophy going forward. After all, the rookies stayed healthy, got some much-needed rest and learned more about the playbook in the classroom than they might have learned on the field.
And of course, Jack picked up one other valuable lesson of his own.
He found the locker room.
May 10, 2016 at 1:21 pm #43783znModeratorRams take time to educate rookie class before finishing contracts
Nick Wagoner
LOS ANGELES — As most of the NFL world seemed to engage in a sort of race to sign their rookie classes last week, the Los Angeles Rams again sat out the proceedings.
Since Jeff Fisher and Les Snead took over as coach and general manager, respectively, in 2012, the Rams have had a set plan for how and when they intend to sign their draft class. More often than not, it’s resulted in the Rams being one of the last teams to sign their rookies.
It’s an approach similar to how Fisher views his first interaction with the rookies as more of an orientation than a minicamp. Before handing over big checks to a bunch of young men who have never had access to that kind of money, Fisher first wants to focus on educating them.
Now that the rookie orientation is over, that process can begin and it will include something a little different this year as the NFL will be joining in that educational process. In years past, the drafted rookies have attended the annual rookie symposium in Ohio. Now, the league is dispatching representatives to each NFL city to give more personalized attention to each team.
“The NFL’s going to come in and address and make a presentation to the ‘rooks,’” Fisher said. “We’re going to continue and do the same things that we’ve always done. We’ll have meetings starting next week with respect to financial planning, life skills and decision making and all those things that we cover. Social media, media relations and the list goes on and on and on. They’ll be educated once we’re done with (rookie) camp. The draft classes are always used to going to the symposium for three days. This has a chance to be a little bit more intimate. I think it has a chance, from the standpoint of the guys being able to absorb more information, I think it may work out better. Plus, we can also participate in them.”
It’s an approach that makes plenty of sense in today’s NFL landscape. Since the new collective bargaining agreement came into effect in 2011 and the rookie salary cap was put in place, there’s not much drama to the rookie deals. The contracts are essentially slotted and there’s little room for negotiation, which means that it’s not all that hard to get deals done. That’s why so many teams are able to quickly sign their rookies after the draft.
In recent years, director of player programs La’Roi Glover has brought in people in various fields to offer the rookies short seminars on things like money management, buying or renting a home and other important life skills before a contract is offered and signed.
In the past few years, the Rams have traditionally signed their rookie class at some point in mid-June. They signed their 2013 group on June 13 and the 2014 and 2015 classes on June 12. It’s probably a safe bet that the Rams will target a similar timeframe for this year’s six drafted rookies.
May 13, 2016 at 2:27 pm #43998znModeratorRams easing rookies in to prevent shock factor
Nick Wagoner
http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/29225/rams-easing-rookies-in-to-prevent-shock-factor
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Rams coach Jeff Fisher doesn’t believe in mixing the old and the new, at least not right away.
Which is why Fisher and the Rams are following their usual procedure when it comes to integrating their rookie class and the veterans. The reason? Fisher doesn’t want the green rookies trying to keep up with a group of players that already knows what to do on a daily basis.
“That’s the objective of what we’re doing so it’s not a shock,” Fisher said. “We want them to go out and condition and be prepared to go into the drills. Our offseason program is this, we can’t come together until June, until the OTAs. So that’s when the offense and defense come together and compete, so we’re separate, so they’ll just be drilling.”
The Rams welcomed their rookies last weekend with their annual orientation. Those three days are spent introducing the rookies to how things should be done on and off the field with on-field work limited to some individual drills and walk through tempo. This week, the rookies and veterans got a chance to mingle a bit in meetings. As the offseason conditioning program progresses, they’ll mostly be kept apart until the final stages, also known as organized team activities.
In the meantime, the Rams will continue to run drills for the rookies in an effort to get them up to speed so when they do merge with their teammates they won’t have as much to learn. With limited time to work on the field because of the collective bargaining agreement, once the on-field team work begins, there’s little time to stop and wait for rookies to catch up.
So the next couple of weeks will focus on trying to speed up the process.
“That’s an excellent opportunity to get them up,” Fisher said. “Once they come together in the OTAs in June, then they’ll be able to compete. I think what we’re going to see when the vets come on the field for their 90-minute session (earlier this week) and the rookie class is observing, you’re going to see a little of this (pounds chest) out of the vets because they are going to show off a little bit. So it works out good — you get more out of the vets, the ‘rooks’ get to see it. Once we get to OTAs everything will be good.”
Just because the Rams are focused on getting their rookies up to speed doesn’t mean they will push them too far too fast. Fisher believes in easing them in, not only to get their conditioning level back to football shape but also to give them a chance to translate what they learn in the classroom to the field.
That last part is the primary focus of the entire exercise.
“You’re looking at the mental things,” Fisher said. “Are they doing the right things? Is the footwork appropriate? Are the steps appropriate? Are you dropping your hips? Those kinds of things. Then of course you’re looking at every once in a while someone goes a little more than half speed and so how well do they pay attention to the details? It’s hard to evaluate the explosiveness and things like that. It’s hard to evaluate when you’re not competing against an opponent, an offensive or defensive opponent.
“This is the way you have to do it. We’re convinced this is how you have to do it. It’s really unfair for them to come out and ask them to get to full speed and then you have a soft tissue injury and then he misses OTAs then he’s behind at camp. We’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s worked out for us because ideally what you want to have is you want to have a healthy roster when you start training camp.”
Fisher was pleased with how the rookies got to work during the orientation but also stressed to his youngsters that they have to stay on top of things to ensure they don’t fall behind. It’s a message he’ll continue to deliver throughout the rest of the offseason program. Once the group gets a concept, the Rams move on to the next one and the one after that.
Rookie quarterback Jared Goff undoubtedly has the most to learn between now and the start of training camp. He had some interaction with the veterans before departing back to the University of California this week but is looking forward to bringing it all together.
“I haven’t met too many of them,” Goff said. “I met a few and it’s been great. I got a bunch of texts from a bunch guys — that’s been really cool. I’m excited to finally work with them, eventually.”
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