Is it fair to call this the first day of the season? It kinda feels like it. Training camp and consequently the Raiders assault on the '10 season is underway. With Mr. McClain signing last night it means all hands will be on deck for the first day of non-contact practices.
That's right, the team that lost two days of OTA's for having too much contact when it wasn't allowed is going to go exclusively non-contact for the first four days that it is allowed. Seems like they could have switched that up a bit. Cable Guy is sold on the positives of this approach. Here is what he had to say:
There’s a ton of benefits. I think the first thing probably is just how our team got into camp and stayed healthy through camp. I mean, other than probably the loss of Chaz Schilens. You know, you look at the soft-tissue injuries and things like that we didn’t have, that teams typically get in those first week, 10 days, we just didn’t have those issues. And I think, as I said to ‘em, the routine of it will really get their bodies kind of into the cycle of getting up at a certain time and having to eat and go to practice, and then rest and meet and go to practice again, and then meetings at night and then it’s time to hit the hay, and kind of get into that routine.
But the biggest issue is really stressing the brain, and bring us up to speed in terms of how we want to play things, and what we’re trying to do communication-wise in certain situations offensively, and I think really expose our whole team to getting a lot of walk-through reps, learning reps. So that was a big benefit. The players, how they felt about it. Cause we talk about these things: How was it? What’d you get out of it? What was good, what was bad? Try to fix it and make it better this year. So there was a lot of positive feedback. Physically No. 1, mentally No. 2, and then I think once we got into that phase last year, which will be Monday this year, we really were ready to go and got going.
He may have a point about the injuries, but I have to admit that I didn't see it paying any dividends in the mental department last season. A fact that may be more attributable to personal than strategies. If this strategy is going to work for Cable, then we will see it this year.
This is Cable's team and his guys. He has said the culture change that he has been striving for is complete. It's time to turn the rhetoric into results. As the under-worked Zack de la Rocha once said, "It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here. What better time than now. All hell can't stop us now."