July 29, 2008 6:08 PM
Two a days going away
If you have packed up the kiddos and loaded up the car to venture to Broncos training camp on a sun-swept afternoon, you may have noticed this is not your father's training camp.
The Broncos, like many teams in the league, have simply adjusted with the times and changed their ways. They will spend this training camp doing to bulk of their physical work in the morning, while the afternoon practices will largely be what coach Mike Shanahan has called "jog-throughs'' or special teams only workouts.
And most people in the league believe that the traditional training camp two-a-day schedule has gone the way of cave paintings and it isn't coming back. That the days of a simply one-a-day schedule will arrive sooner rather than later.
There is too great a fear of injury these days and most coaches fear injuries more than they fear being unprepared.
Also, the offseason doesn't look anything like it used to.
Teams have far more organized workouts in the offseason than they did 15 years ago -- there was a time when a team's entire offseason program consisted of a two-day minicamp.
Players no longer come to training camp to get in shape, they are expected to be ready to go when they arrive and decrease their chances of making significantly if they aren't. And teams can now only bring 80 players to camp, several dozen players fewer than even 25 years ago.
So camp is really no longer about weeding out the players who can't give enough. It's about a few last looks, finding guys for the last few roster spots and for taking the rough edges off the playbook on both sides of the ball.
These days it's safety first because the coaches who don't worry about the health of their roster as they exit August usually find they don't get too many chances to change their ways.
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