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BB: Well, as I said yesterday, I'm
glad we have the extra day here.
Q: With your offseason conditioning program, hypothetically if your
season ends in January, do you have guys in here working out in February? Is
it kind of quiet up to a certain point?
BB: The offseason program, per se, that the whole team is involved in
can't begin until whatever the league date is on that. It's usually about
the third week in March. I forget the exact date. It changes from year to
year. That's when the program can officially start. Now, there are guys that
are in different phases of rehab at the end of the season. Guys have little
lingering injuries, or whatever, that are left over, and they usually
continue to rehab those and get them done and get them taking care of so
that they can start the next season healthy, whenever that is. Like, say a
guy has an ankle sprain in the next-to-last game of the year. He's going to
continue to do that. So there's some of that. Then there are other guys who
just come in to workout on a regular basis, especially some of the younger
guys, like practice squad guys or maybe guys who didn't play that much, that
kind of want to get the jump on the offseason program because they really
aren't that worn down from the season because they didn't have that much
playing time. It kind of falls into a little bit of a modified situation
there, but that's all on their own until the mainstream program starts at
the end of March.
Q: Do you scale back the weightlifting schedule through the regular
season?
BB: We have a regular program for it, but it's a lot different than what
it is in the offseason. In the offseason, you're really training and you can
make a lot of strength gains and physical gains. During the season, it's
much more of a maintenance program. In other words, you train in the
offseason to get up to this level and then during the season you try to keep
it basically at that level as opposed to letting it…so that each year you
can build up a little bit and then start from a higher ground when you go
into the next season. So you kind of build, maintain theoretically. Then the
next year build and maintain and you get on that type of a graph.
Q: Do your programs differ from player to player based on their body
shapes, their positions?
BB: It's based more on what their individual needs are, and position has a
little bit to do with it, but every player needs lower body strength. Every
player needs upper body strength. Every player needs flexibility. That being
said, there's some type of imbalance there with just about all of us.
Something is a strong point. Something is a weak point. Then there are
different programs that Jim Whalen and his staff, and Mike Woicik and his
staff, use to modify the player's training. For example, you have a back
problem or a history of back problems, then there might be certain exercises
or things that a) you wouldn't do, and there may be other things that you
would do extra that the next guy wouldn't do who has a shoulder problem. I'm
not saying surgery-rehab shoulder problem, I'm just saying needs more upper
body strength, let's say. Again, there is a mainstream program, but then
it's modified on an individual basis. That has some relevance to the
position, but it has more to do with just your individual needs as an
athlete.
Q: Mike Woicik has a pretty good track record. How has he done in his
time here?
BB: Really good. Really good, because Mike's background is very
extensive. He was a track coach. He was at Syracuse for 10 years, or however
long it was, but not just working with the football team, although he did
extensive work with the football team, but he trained other athletes as
well. Even though we're not training track athletes, speed is an important
part. Speed and explosion, as you have in track, for example in sprinting,
that's very similar to what we do on the football field. It's short burst.
It's longer recovery times and short, explosive burst. That's what football
is. That's what track is, in some events, not all of them, but some of them,
they're short explosive burst. As it pertains to strength, explosion,
training and conditioning, flexibility, which again, any of us that have
been to a track meet to see track athletes, those guys stretch like 90
percent of the time. As all of that is encompassed into an athlete's
physical development, I think Mike has a tremendous background, certainly as
good as anybody that I've been around in all of that, and then trying to
integrate the various aspects of it into what one specific athlete needs, so
that everybody is not on the same program and everybody is not at the same
stage of their development. Clearly, players that are in their 30s are at a
lot of different stage of their development than some of our younger
offensive linemen who are in their early 20s. What they need and what they
should be doing, and what they're capable of doing, are two different things
as well. That whole aspect of the game and our sport in pro football has
changed tremendously since [I've come into] the league. That's probably been
as big of a change, and there have been a lot of changes, that's probably been
as big as anything. When I was with the Colts, the weight room was a
Universal Gym. It would have fit on this stage. That was the weight room
and that was the weight program. There was no offseason program. When the
season was over, then the next time you saw those guys was basically in
training camp. At Detroit, that was definitely more of a program similar to
what we have here, but again, the different stages that it has evolved to and
the modifications between what different athletes need.... Like squats, for example. Lower body strength, it's everything
for a football player. Everybody needs to do them and that's how you get
stronger, is by doing squats and leg exercises. But the joints, there are
certain things that are uncomfortable or difficult for some players to do.
In our weight room, we probably have six different ways essentially to do
squats. Depending on what your individual condition or situation is then
there are some exercises that enable you to do those, to work those muscles,
and there are the ones that kind of aggravate some other kind of situations.
Again, I think that Mike does a great job and Harold [Nash] and Jim [Whalen]
and Joe Van Allen, Dave Granito, those guys do a great job of modifying
those programs so that the guys can get the work that they need without
aggravating something else, like we all did in high school where everybody
did the same thing. Which at that point that's fine, but we're different.
Our needs and requirements are a little bit different for our athletes.
Q: In a way, is it starting to replace what camp used to be? Now you
don't need as much camp because they're already in shape when they come in?
BB: Yes, I think there's something to be said for that.
Training camp my first year with Baltimore, training camp started July 5.
Our first regular season game was like September 21. It was two-and-a-half
months of training camp. That's way different from where we are now. Six
preseason games, plus we had three scrimmages against the Redskins. We
played a whole season before we even started the 14-game regular season. It
was a totally different schedule in a lot of respects. The numbers were
different, too. When you came to camp, you didn't have the roster limits,
like 80. I think we went to camp with, I don't know, 105, 110 guys, whatever
it was. It was about four teams.
Q: Guys probably weren't in as good a shape when they reported, right?
BB: I would say that in some cases
that was true. In other cases, I would say it would vary from player to
player. There were some guys that were in real good shape. There were other
guys who had more work to do – some of the
veteran players, because that's just the way it was done. I'm trying to
think…we went to camp July 5 and I'd say the first preseason game was like
August 1 or somewhere in there. It was truly almost four weeks of training
camp prior to the first preseason game, and then you had six preseason
games. It was like kind of a death march, where you just literally put one foot in
front of the other for, whatever it was, 10 weeks, 11 weeks, and just try to
keep moving in the right direction.
Q: When you were with the Colts, was weight training a structured part of
the program or was it like, 'Here's the equipment if you want to use it?'
BB: Yes, it was more of that. I think that's the first strength coach
that was truly a strength coach, was when I was at New York when Coach [Ray] Perkins hired Jim Williams, who was at Wyoming and previously Nebraska, who had a pretty established college program. In Detroit, even
though Floyd Reese did the strength, he also had other position
responsibilities, and the same thing in Baltimore, the same thing in Denver,
where a position coach handled it. Whereas now, and as most teams in the NFL
have, the strength coach is a strength coach without significant other
position-coaching responsibilities, like the defensive line or the
receivers, and that's the way it was when I came into the league. Just about
everybody had that. I think Pittsburgh had one, but there were almost maybe
one or two teams and that was it. Everybody had just gotten a special teams
coach, but that was a position that was earmarked on the staff, that was in
the late 70s and early 80s. Then I'd say about the early to mid 80s, probably
pretty much every team had just one person that was in charge of the
strength conditioning program. Or two guys – one for weight training and one
for conditioning or running.
Q: Nebraska was a leader for a lot of that stuff, right?
BB: Right, they were and they had a lot of people come out of that
program, the strength assistants and so forth, that went on to start
a program somewhere else. Their tree on that was pretty big. Theirs was
weight training, as opposed to say the Penn State program, which was all
machines and machine training and all of that. They had a lot of people come
out of that that Dan Riley and the Redskins, and then a lot of his
disciples, have used. But the emphasis of the program was a little bit
different. Well, not a little bit different, it was a lot different. With
that, I don't think it's as big of a deal now as it was then, but back then
when you decided to go with that program you're probably also deciding to go
with however many hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment you needed
to install that program, because you had to have a machine for everything.
So it was a big financial commitment and space commitment and everything else.
Again, it was a different setup. You go to training camp and you have to
take all those machines and put them somewhere. It took up a lot of room. It
was financially and logistically and everything else. But those are kind of
the two, I wouldn't say the two, but they were two of the more prominent
ones.
Q: What did you do with the extra day this week?
BB: We've been on a regular schedule here on Wednesday, Thursday and
Friday, today. Then tomorrow is going to be kind of a day for us to catch
up and review some things and go over some special situations that we would
normally do today. But it just gives us a little bit more time to spread it
out and continue to watch film and just get more familiar with Minnesota and
their personnel and their schemes to where hopefully by today or tomorrow
the players are really starting to feel real confident in identifying
different looks and different personnel as they shuffle them in and out and
that type of thing, which is where I think you kind of are maybe on Thursday
of a normal game with a team that you're familiar with, like a Denver,
or Buffalo or Miami – teams where you're not [asking] who's Jason Taylor, who's Zach Thomas, who's [Chris] Chambers, who's [Randy] McMichael, you're not
asking those kinds of questions because you've played against them multiple
times. Players like Kevin Williams and Chester Taylor, [Darren] Sharper and guys like that, they're good players but we just don't have the familiarity
with them. And their style of play, although we kind of know it maybe in
general terms, we learn a lot more about it specifically as we do more
and more tape work. Those are guys that we just haven't built up that
type of a bankroll on.
Q: Is Sunday strictly a travel day?
BB: Sunday is a normal day-before-the-game schedule, which for us that's
to come in and talk about the previous day's practice and get some of those
things ironed out. It's, again, to cover a few special situations – one time
type plays like the hands team, onsides kick, Hail Mary type plays at the end of the game,
things like that. Then we have a special teams
walkthrough and then we travel. That day-before-the-game is pretty
consistent for us, home or away.
Q: Is Minnesota the loudest dome?
BB: I don't know. That's a good question. It's pretty loud. I think
they're all pretty loud, especially when things get going. They're up there.
All of the ones that we've played in, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Seattle – we
haven't been in the new one, but that was the Kingdome. Where else? The Silverdome, or Ford Field, all of those get, yeah.
Q: Is there anything extra that the offensive guys will have to do to
prepare for the crowd noise?
BB: I don't know if it's extra. I
think it's similar to what we would normally face. There's probably a little
bit more of it and I think that the threats that they have are more
significant. I mean, they're really good on
defense, and you're talking about a Monday night game in an environment
that's going to be loud and real hostile. One of the things they do
that gives you a lot of problems is they're quick off the ball, that's
number one. Number two, they run a lot of blitzers up inside. So if
they're able to time up that blitz so the guy is hitting the line of
scrimmage right as the ball is being snapped, you don't have very much time
to get that picked up. You either have to slide a linemen over in front of
it, or a back has to get up and get him. Something has to happen and it has
to happen pretty quickly. If you're a little bit late off the ball, or you
don't hear the snap count and you're waiting to move when they move and
then they have the jump on you in the neutral zone, that's where some bad
things happen.
Q: Is there anything to the thing that people say, 'Take the crowd out of
it?'
BB: I don't want to say I'm oblivious to it. I think there's certainly an
element of momentum, or whatever the word is. But I think that's really a
function of your performance. I think if you play well, then you have a lot
more ability to control the whole situation on the road than when you're not
playing, whether you're playing in Denver or Kansas City or Miami, or
wherever you are playing. It could be an outdoor stadium. Those stadiums – Washington and FedEx or RFK when we were at
those fields they were...I could feel my head, even talking about it, I can
feel my head ringing in those situations at certain points in the game when
it gets going. The best thing to do is to play well and to have some kind of
control in the game. And then it's bad, but it's not as bad as when they're ringing
up points and negative plays on defense and all of that stuff on you. That's
not where you want to be.
Q: What were your impressions of Kevin Williams coming out of college?
BB: He's a really athletic player, a guy that could play probably for us,
and most teams, could play inside and could play outside. He's a tall guy.
He has some range, but he's quick. He has good playing strength. He runs
well. He definitely could rush the passer. I saw him more as a 3-4 end than
as a nose, but I think he can play inside, as he does for them as a three
technique, or could play in there as a two technique in a 4-3 scheme. He has
some position flexibility and pass rush. Rangy guy. He plays on his feet.
You don't see Kevin on the ground very much. He's athletic. He has good
balance and good playing strength and he's quick.
Q: With Pat Williams there as well, who do you block? You have to
double-team somebody I assume, but you're going to leave one of them free.
BB: When you double-team them, who blocks the other guys?
Q: That's my question.
BB: I'm talking about the linebackers. Look, if they're in a seven- or
eight-man front, you have seven or eight blockers, however many you want
have. Sometimes they have one more than you have anyway depending on what
the front is. So once you start double-teaming guys, now you're turning guys
loose. I don't understand all those double teams. I really don't. Maybe you
can explain them to me. Now in pass protection, when it's five on four, then
you have one guy that does get doubled, or if they keep somebody else in, if
you're a zone team, then sometimes you're going six against four in the pass
rush. But in the running game, they can't double anybody for very long without
giving up somebody else. They're only standing two yards behind the line of
scrimmage. Somebody has to block them, too. But yes, it's a problem. It's a
problem to block Pat Williams. It's a problem to block Kevin Williams. It's
a problem to block [Darrion] Scott. It's a problem to block [Napoleon] Harris, [E.J.] Henderson, [Ben] Leber, that's why they're one of the best
defenses in the league in every situation – third-down, red area, against the
run, turnovers. They pretty much lead the league in everything. They have a
lot of good players. They're good in the secondary with Sharper and
[Antoine] Winfield, [Fred] Smoot, [Dwight] Smith. They're tough. |
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