With the Baltimore Ravens being among the favorites to win Super Bowl LV, any perceived issues earn a little extra look. And as the NFL has canceled preseason games and in-person minicamps due to COVID-19, it would make sense that the lack of contact before Week 1 would be a concern. But the Ravens believe they’ll be better off for it.
As the coronavirus pandemic forced teams to be socially distant this offseason, training camp is the first and only time players will be on the field in front of coaches and with all their teammates. Teams also aren’t allowed to be in pads until Aug. 17, and even then, only for 14 practices. That’s not a lot of time to prepare for the regular season. And beyond what it means for bubble players just trying to make the team, the lack of meaningful contact before Week 1 has its positives and negatives.
We’ve certainly see sloppy play from some players early in the regular season every year. While there are a ton of reasons for that, it often happens if a player missed a lot of training camp or they didn’t get as much in-game action in the preseason. The result is often slower play, less physicality, and an all-around worse performance until the player gets back up to speed after a few games.
No matter how much a player practices this offseason, they’re going to be woefully short in the in-game reps and contact they’d normally get. For some, it won’t impact their performance come Week 1 and they’ll be just as great as their prime last year. For others, they’ll be a shadow of their former selves for a few weeks until they can get back in the flow. Coach John Harbaugh opened up a bit about the opposing sensibilities in this unusual offseason.
“We’ll always try to find a way to keep our players as healthy and safe as we can. “That’s the right thing to do, ‘A,’ and ‘B,’ it’s beneficial to the team. We have a common interest there,” Harbaugh said. “Secondly, we have to be ready to play. You can’t put a team out there unprepared. Football is a tackling and a blocking sport, so we are going to have to find a way to get that tackling and blocking done in practice against one another to the level that we need to, to be ready to play the game against the Browns and all the other teams we are playing in September.”
For all the potential negatives, there are some serious positives. The fewer hits players receive, the less banged up they are rolling into the regular season. That can be an attractive option for teams like the Ravens, who believe they’ll be in contention for Super Bowl LV. That’s especially the case for a Baltimore team that has been plagued with big injuries before the regular season over the last five years. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson specifically noted the players’ health when asked for his feelings about the lack of preseason games this year.
“Our guys will be going into the regular season safely,” Jackson said. “No little nick-ups, injuries or anything like that will occur from preseason games. I’m cool with it.”
Ravens strength and conditioning coach Steve Saunders looked at it from a training perspective and agreed with Jackson’s sentiments.
“I think that the training effect is that guys who would have gotten banged-up, jacked-up a little bit from preseason games, are not. And I would expect guys to go into the first game in better shape – stronger, faster, better conditioned,” Saunders said. “We’re going to have plenty of contact; we’re Ravens. But after that first game, might they be a little more sore than a regular Week 1? Yes, potentially, but I think in the long run, we are going to be ramped-up and ready for the season. I think it’ll be a positive for us.
This year, all 53 players on all 32 teams will have that same hurdle in front of them. It’ll be up to how they prepare with the time given them in training camp that will determine how successful each team ends up being.
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