Don’t expect players to be excited about training camp...

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Don’t expect players to be excited for the start of training camp

By Ross Tucker Jul 23, 2019 97

Most NFL players feel the exact opposite of how you do this week.

You’re excited. By the end of the week, every team will report for training camp which means football is back! Time to celebrate and get fired up for the new season, right?

Not exactly.

For many players, these last couple of days are about as bad as it gets in their chosen vocation, which is to say, as far as jobs go, not all that bad really.

Still, they are coming off a full month-plus in which their time was their own. They could work out when and with whom they wanted. They were hopefully able to spend a good chunk of that time with family and friends and maybe even go back to their hometowns or offseason homes. That time is one of the best parts about being an NFL player.

That freedom ends this week.

Players are well aware of the fact that once they report to training camp they essentially lose the ability to do what they want to do for five-plus months. I once heard a coach compare it to being on a submarine. Once that vessel goes below the surface your life is under water until the mission is complete and you return.

Now, to be clear, every player knows what they are signing up for and gladly accepts it. Most players are keenly aware of how fortunate they are to even be in a position to have or compete for these jobs, and they know they’re getting to live out their own dreams, as well as the dreams of so many other players who never made it this far. But that doesn’t mean they have to look forward to it.

Technically, NFL players get one day off a week but a large percentage of them still go into work that day to exercise, rehab, recover, or watch film. I honestly don’t ever remember a day in which I didn’t go into the facility for at least a couple of hours, even on those off days. There was something nice about being on your own schedule even if you were still working.

Unlike many of your family and friends, as a player you work on the weekends. That means you won’t be at your cousin’s wedding or your buddy’s bachelor party or even home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It just comes with the territory. That’s not a complaint, mind you, just a reality.

Knowing that mental anguish and physical pain are mere days away isn’t for everybody. That’s why there are always players like Bengals guard Clint Boling and Bills safety Rafael Bush who retire this time of year. There will be more the first couple of days of camp. They just can’t get themselves to a place mentally where they are ready and willing to put themselves through the grind of another NFL season.

Even if training camp isn’t nearly what it used to be in terms of padded practices and contact, they are still long days starting at 6 a.m. and ending around 10 p.m. The heat wave that hit large swaths of the country recently reminded me of mornings during camp when I’d hear the guy on the radio say that there was a heat advisory in effect and that you should spend as little time as possible outside.

That always made me chuckle as I would put on 10-15 pounds of equipment before going outside for 2-3 hours in order to run into other 320-pound men over and over again.

As a guy who can’t even go to a kid’s pool party without spending the whole time in the shade or the water these days, I honestly don’t even know how I did that. You just do, I suppose, and you lose anywhere from 5-12 pounds of water weight per practice. Then you hydrate and try to replenish those fluids as best as you can before doing the same thing the next day.

Again, none of this is a quest for sympathy. These players realize millions of others would love to be in their shoes.

But that doesn’t mean they have to be jumping for joy as they look at the calendar, because while they are grateful to have this opportunity, they sure as heck don’t eagerly anticipate the start of training camp like all the fans do.