CFL camps get job done

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/06/2009 (5942 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They say there are too many limitations to training camp in the CFL — not enough time to evaluate quarterbacks and players, not enough pre-season games to properly prepare, and so on and so forth.

I disagree.

I think you get more than enough time to evaluate, just not necessarily enough time to see if the players take to the coaching they are provided with and the levels they can improve to and achieve. I also say you get more than enough time to learn about the players that are trying to make your team for the first time and have never played in the CFL before: the rookies.

In many ways training camp is a microcosm of the regular season. An intense, abbreviated slice of the 18-game marathon wrapped up in a two-a-day package.

In the regular season you have to be able to learn new instalments and scheme adjustments over the course of two or three days before your next opponent on a week-by-week basis. In training camp you put in new segments of the playbook every single day and are expected to practice them at full speed merely hours later.

Thereby if you, as a new player, cannot digest and perform what you learn in camp, it stands to reason you will make critical mental errors trying to digest and perform adjustments that are made every week during the regular season.

Over the course of those 18 games in the regular season, the average full-time starter at any given position will experience roughly 1,000 plays.

Staying healthy and avoiding injury through 1,000 plays of full-collision professional football is a testament to both physical preparedness and conditioning and God’s honest luck. As important as it is for a team to field the best 24 players available to them, they also need those 24 to be as durable and reliable as possible.

During the course of two-a-days, a player might perform around 60 repetitions of controlled-contact drills that simulate game experiences but are not even close to the tempo and level of contact that will be experienced during the regular season.

As I mentioned, though avoiding injuries has as much to do with being lucky as it is being in shape, if a new player succumbs to one ailment after another through the course of 10 days of intense practicing — which is really all training camp amounts to — then the odds of that player playing 18 games for you without missing a huge spell is somewhere between slim and none.

So while the believers in six-week NFL type training camps will insist it is the only way to properly prepare and evaluate for an upcoming season, the three-week gauntlet we all run in the CFL is just as effective in exposing and revealing limitations and shortcomings of those petitioning to make the team and enter the league for the first time.

Rookies are extremely disadvantaged when they come to CFL training camps at the outset. Unlike the NFL, they are not paid to attend their first camp and if they get injured, only the cost of their rehabilitation is covered no matter whether that treatment carries over into the regular season or not.

But even these disadvantages, I feel, are helpful in the screening process when it comes to deciding upon your final roster.

If a player is committed and enthusiastic towards earning membership on your roster over the course of three weeks, where the only compensation they receive is their room and board and the chance to compete, then you can be assured that their passion for the game and desire to be a part of your team may be strong enough to carry them through the adverse times that occur every football year.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.