Camp Buzz -- July 27, 2008

by

Robert Janis

It must be said, there has been a rash of injuries in training camp so far. And it has an effect on the entire team not just in terms of losing a player, but in terms of managing practice.

"It is difficult because the rotations become mess up," said Coach Zorn. "The healthy players have to work harder and you can't evaluate the players that are injured. Sometimes players will pull themselves out of practice when they are sore, but not injured. I have not seen any of that and the players are continually pushing through the soreness. That is a sign of a mature and veteran team that really wants to be playing."

And, again, tempo is on the Coach's mind. He is pushing it and pushing it hard. "It forces a defense to rush as well," he said. "If the offense goes up to the line of scrimmage in a casual manner, then the defense feels very comfortable. They can get all of their calls communicated, identify the offense's formation, and adjust to any mistakes they have made. But if we get to the line of scrimmage quickly, then the offense forces the defense to be ready and possibly make errors."

The Coach also continued to give out kudos to players who performed well on Saturday's scrimmage. He pointed to Jon Jansen in particular on Sunday. "Jon had a great scrimmage," said Zorn. "He was very active and it did not look like he was limping around on his ankle. He did a good job and I was very impressed."

It seems that the players are buying into the tempo thing. For example, Chris Cooley said, "It is going to be very important. The big thing we are doing right now is we are lining up and snapping the ball. We are not shifting around. We are not motioning as much as we have before. It is important for us to get to the ball, snap it and catch everybody off guard."

I like the tempo thing. The one problem that we had in the Gibbs 2.0 was that the team was late in breaking from the huddle and often that led to a  too much time penalty. And, as Cooley pointed out, there were just too many motion or false start penalties last year. Perhaps that is being remedied. Time will tell. 

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