Training Camp Hypocrisy
Training camp is an annoying time of year. It’s when a lot of valuable information is revealed, but you don’t really know what information was right until it becomes hindsight. It’s another case of smoke and mirrors, of unseparated wheat and chaff. Some guys will have horrible training camps and it’ll be a red flag for when they end up having massive issues. Some guys will have horrible training camps, then they go on and have career years. Some fights will signify locker room dysfunction, some fights just…forget they ever happened this team is rolling.
It becomes hard to actually judge anything you read. This comic was inspired by a clip I saw of Jaxson Dart throwing a pick 6 as his first pass in camp. Realistically…who cares? He’s a rookie QB, a noted project that needs development time, and already confirmed as not our starter. Him throwing a pick early in camp is basically a non-issue. It shouldn’t even register. But if you are a rival fan who laughs at the Giants…well this is just confirmation bias that the Giants are bad and stupid. Thing is, that might be true! We don’t know yet. That’s the problem. Jaxson Dart throwing a stupid pick early in camp might be a red flag or a mirage. Or it might just be the Giants secretly have an outstanding defense. Who the fuck knows?
This time of year makes us all hypocrites. When your rival team has a fuckup, it is signalling the end. The QB was always shit. They just got lucky. When it is your team, it’s nothing to worry about! It’s just training camp. Now’s the proper time to get all these mistakes out to begin with! You know that beat reporter who keeps having negative reports about your team? He’s a hack writer! He’s always been a negative dipshit! Everyone knows Jimmy Jefferson from the STATE POST is a loser hack who is just sour our coach told him off once. He hates covering our team on the beat. But that OTHER writer? Bob Biffton for the CITY GAZETTE, who keeps talking about how good (player) looks? He’s right on the money. He’s our best reporter. Everyone should listen to him. He’s correct. Until he says something negative, then he’s a hack.
This is kind of why I honestly just tend to tune out this time of year, similar to how I tune out most of draft season. There are truths and valuable reporting in these weeks but there is also clickbait and noise. I’ve ceased the search of being ahead of things, of consuming all the news so I can be completely up to date and in touch. It doesn’t feel worth the hassle. Maybe if it was my actual job or I was able to go to the camps and get a more direct experience, that would be different. These days I’ll just read the cliff notes on practices, hope for the best, ignore the worst because I have to, and wait to see how things go. It frees up a lot of my mental energy for more fun things, like my daily existential dread.
Speaking of daily existential dread, I hope your search for a new gig is going/went well.
Remember when Ja’Marr Chase couldn’t catch a pass during his rookie training camp? I remember: https://www.nfl.com/news/jamarr-chase-lack-of-concentration-led-to-drops-bengals-rookie
Whenever this time of year rolls around I usually just think about what most former/current players (most recently, JJ Watt(?) had a tweet about this) say about training camp — That we as fans have no idea what is going on and can’t judge the results of any given day. We don’t know what the team drills are attempting to work on. We don’t know what the goals are for that specific practice. We don’t know what the coaches are telling the players to do on any given play. We don’t know anything, so trying to make wholesale judgements about a team based on whatever is going on in camp is useless. I get why people want to do it, since we’re so close to the actual season and it’s the perfect time for speculation and naive hope/optimism, but at the end of the day, these are just practices. And they’ll stay that way until Week 1 of the Regular Season kicks off. You’re better off just trying to enjoy the (very bad) football being played through August and speculate on which bubble guys actually make the roster, honestly.
I was watching training camp a few years ago and expressed some angst over our QB missing a couple of wide-open reads. Like WIDE-OPEN in the flat. Even a spectator who has never played the game could see it was wide open. I was with a buddy who played OL in college who basically said “you ever think they told him to not throw to the first read?” I basically said what JJ Watt said, that sometimes the offense was told to focus on throwing to 2nd and 3rd reads. Sometimes they were told that they were only focusing on route concepts to the outside. He even said a couple of times he was told to intentionally miss his blocking assignment or bobble the snap to see how the offense would react in that situation.
Whenever I get too high or too low about anything related to sports I sit back and think “I’m not a professional. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m not getting paid millions of dollars specifically because I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. Let it go and enjoy the ride”.
Thank you for confirming that it was JJ Watt who said that because I genuinely couldn’t remember.
And that’s basically my approach to anything sports related, but especially training camp. I think beyond just being a fan outside the loop for practices, a lot of us just tend to forget that the entire purpose of practice is to allow for players to have an opportunity to fail without consequence. QBs are supposed to throw interceptions. Skill guys are supposed to drop passes or run the route/direction. Blockers are supposed to miss assignments. Coverages are supposed to be busted. Tackles are to be missed. So on, so forth. You do that stuff in practice so you can immediately fix it and make sure that it doesn’t happen in real games. No reason to overreact once you look at it like that.
run the *wrong* route/direction. oops lol
Wait . . . does that mean they do interception drills to make sure the offense is prepared to prevent long returns? That could recontextualize a _lot_ of QB evaluation.
Unironically yes. These are NFL Coaches we’re talking about here. It wouldn’t shock me at all if they occasionally tell their QBs to throw a meatball just to see how the offense will react in a sudden change situation. It’s why you really can’t take anything seriously during practices.
I’m reminded of Daboll’s first season with the Giants (not the best example, I know, but it still clocked for me) when he went out of his way to make sure Daniel Jones looked like a shmuck and then made the backups look great specifically to see how he handled adversity.
Obviously didn’t work out for long, but it still helped me in framing things the way you are… we have no friggin’ idea what the coaches are doing or who and what they’re testing against, so why bother reading into the answers when we don’t even know what the question is.
Remember when Matt Ryan went viral because Kyle Shanahan(ds) picked him off. People and media thought the Falcons were doomed that year. Ultimately, we were doomed for all of eternity that season but, aside from the last 30 minutes, what a season it was.
Goblins are real.
Eli experienced the both of the first three.
Especially the second set when he gets this from both sides of the fandom.
Kenny Pickett was perfect in the 2023 preseason, cementing him as the QB of the future.