Real football practices begin this week. Let’s go …
Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports; Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports; Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
• For me, part of the expense of opt-out guys is purely financial. It usually costs an agent around $ 30,000 to house, feed and train a player in the eight-week scouting combination – a cost that has gone up over the years and become increasingly important for the pre -draft process of each player. Now, instead of eight weeks, we are talking seven months. So I decided to throw some rocks over this Monday, and called Pete Bommarito, who owns Bommarito Performance Systems in South Florida, as part of that.
He has been training athletes for the choir since 2000, and has been doing so since his own business since 2005. And as such, the last few weeks have been crazy for him, as children research for the exclusion of their college seasons (Miami DE Gregory Rousseau told us in the MMQB this morning that he will work there in advance).
“We’ve already started our draft prep,” Bommarito said this afternoon. ‘It’s very simple, we’ve hired a number of NFL free agents, we had four at the same time last week. And with the design prep guys, we’ll just run them with those guys. We are prepared for something like that. ”
So how does it work? Bommarito’s plans for the players are complicated, but the idea behind them is pretty simple. The opt-outs would engage in training with the free agents, working three days a week half days, and full days two days a week, from now until Christmas. After that, they would move on to the normal draft prep, and lead in All-Star games and the combine (their days at that point could take 10-12 hours).
As for the cost, Bommarito says that of the $ 30,000, a player trained for two months for the combination, $ 15,000- $ 16,000. In this case, Bommarito said, the standard for training, given the slower recovery and longer duration, would cost about $ 5,000 a month. That is, of course, before you get to homes, a rental car and scholarships, which are generally part of the package makers that players offer.
Bottom line: This will be expensive for agents, and may not be cost effective once you are above the elite kids.
Also worth mentioning: Many coaches are courting agents, the same agents who have been in the ears of college players in recent weeks. XPE Sports sent a plan to agents who broke their program in General Prep / Foundational Movement (October 5-Nov. 13), Speed / Position Training (Nov. 30-Nov. 22) prior to combination prep, with breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas worked in there. EXOS gave agents an even more detailed plan (which is below), with four periods (Sept. 7-Oct. 2, Oct. 30-30, Nov. 21-21, Dec. 30) for combine prep.
Courtesy of EXOS
Clearly, a lot of people here were ready for it.
• Had a good interview with NFL Films supervisor producer Ken Rodgers on Monday as he worked through tomorrow night’s premiere of Hard Knots: Los Angeles, that will be a very different Hard Knocks than what you are used to. For one, it will have two teams. And apparently the circumstances in which it is performed heel different.
“Practices look different, the locker rooms are different, how they arrive to camp, the tests, everything is different,” Rodgers said. ‘We have the video and a look inside that is deeper than anyone has seen. There will be more intimacy than one has seen in a COVID-safe environment at any workplace in America. It really is not just a story of the Chargers or the Rams, this is a story of an American workplace trying to regain productivity.
“To me, it’s a document of his time.”
Of course there are limits too. Rodgers said in a normal year that a crew of about 45 people from NFL Films would have the flood Hard knuckles page. This year, after negotiations with the league and NFLPA, the limit is 13 and those 13 must remain six feet from players and coaches at all times, which, says Rodgers, “is completely different for us.” This is for example for longer lenses and the elimination of wide lenses.
And it will mean a different performance than you are used to. How? So, we got that covered with our questions for Rodgers. Here is more:
MMQB: What will tomorrow look like for the viewer?
Rodgers: I do not think the product will look different. Our focus has been to keep quality just as high. I think the camps look extremely different. So the process looks different, if not the product. Everything at these two camps looks different this year … It’s fascinating to see how these two teams handle it on a day-to-day basis. Everything is different in terms of what you will see, but I think the filmmaking, to the credit of our crew, has changed technologically, you will see many more Zoom meetings, robotic camera shots, instead of actual camera operators, but the actual quality is the same.
MMQB: That you have the same number of robo-cams (12) in each facility, but do you use them more than usual because of the boundaries?
KR: I would probably say the same thing. The extension is the Zoom meetings of which we are a part, we record those. They actually have fewer meetings in the robo-filmed rooms than usual. So yes, we actually use them more, but they have less of them, so it evolves. Then, besides that, we film all these Zoom meetings so that the net profit is humongous. Between robos and Zooms, we are much heavier on cameras with operations than Zoom-operated than cameras with humans.
MMQB: Do you guys feel pressured, seeing the historical character of this?
KR: I feel a sense that history is being taken prisoner. I can produce NFL Films producers of future years who watch this footage when we record it, because I experienced the same thing as a young producer who watched the 1970s films that were recorded before. I was born. I can imagine that future generations of NFL Films producers have not lived through this crazy, up-and-down football season, and this crazy up-and-down year in America, who did not really understand what it was. And a little retrospective pride feels like we conquered it the right way, and as completely as we capture it.
MMQB: Has this made the relationship with the teams more important to get it done?
KR: Just at this point. I have to be honest, it took confidence on behalf of the players union and the teams at the beginning of the process that we would go about our business in the same way. That we experience testing every day, we wear the tracing bracelets just like the players are, we do not go to dinner, we have no guests visiting, our crew does not hang out together in hotel rooms. We go through the same protocols as the players are, and once they understood that, the confidence level was there. That was something needed to gain that trust.
• Interesting to see the Patriots sign ex-Texans RB Lamar Miller. There was some concern in Houston that the torn ACL he suffered last August would rob him of some of his explosives at 29 years old. But the feeling I have is that Houston did not believe he was pre-injury shot, and people there think he could still be a quality depth option for a good team. That said, it is difficult for New England to have this right by having first- and third-round picks (Sony Michel, Damien Harris) passing on the position, while also veterans James White and Rex Burkhead have on the roster.
• This today from Packers GM Brian Gutekunst, about the season ahead for his fellow scouts: “As for our scouting staff, I think we are well prepared to attack this on a number of different fronts. But I think we also need to be very flexible, because things will change and we will prepare. There will be a concept, we’ll have to buy players, so we’ll just have to do it a few different ways. ”
One very common refrain I heard last month from people on that side of the business is that teams with well-connected scouts will be with a big advantage this fall. And that makes sense. With school visits unlikely to be allowed, even if there is a college season, the ability of a scout to get people on the phone and get reliable information will be very important. Which is kind of kind of like journalism has been over the last few months. Your Rolodex is always important, and even more so now.
• I would say that former Patriot / ex-Titan CB Logan Ryan overplayed his hand a bit in the spring, firmly holding on to his expectation of hitting eight figures for 2020. That said, if I’m a team that needs secondary help now, Ryan makes a lot of sense. He’s a great teammate and brings angle / safety flexibility, not to mention a ton of the big-game experience.
• One nice remnant from my conversation with Joey Bosa (as seen in MMQB) —I wondered if he was thinking about how his payday could have helped his brother Nick financially. ‘Oh yeah, and I think he’s going to overcome it far when the time comes, because that’s the kind of player he is, and not just him, but every great young d-end who’s coming into the league right now, will have a bar to get to and from, ”said Bosa. ‘I’m sure it will be passed on here fairly soon. But just to do that for my brother, I mean, I can not say enough about the player he is and the person he is, how hard he works. He earns every penny he gets. And what he got to Nick, here’s that story: ‘He was playing his video games, so he had to put the headset on, headset off, and he looked at me with that face. Like, ho-lee s —. But we were all waiting for it, and he could not have been happier. Everyone calling and seeing the giant smile they had on their faces, to me it just means more than what a dollar amount. And I think in my head, he thinks, ‘Oh, what shall I get? ” Allowing health, Nick Bosa will get a lot.
• This tweet from Joe Burrow was it for me …
He’s got it a little too big, but I can look back at my notes from last summer and see that he was seen as no better than a third- or fourth-round pick in the 2019 season. had, was that what he would have been. Or he should have been eligible to attend a sixth year. Anyway, that’s a pretty good window into some of the collateral damage when the college season is called up.
Ravens LT Ronnie Stanley told the Baltimore media on Monday that his contract situation “is not really in front of me.” But it should be for the Ravens, who have helped Stanley develop into a top-five player in his position, and an essential piece of Lamar Jackson’s supporting cast. His concept classmate Laremy Tunsil received $ 22 million a year. It’s fair to think that Stanley is worth that too.
• We gave you the updated numbers on COVID-19 lists in the MMQB, and Monday was another good day in that regard. League match saw one player on the list (Titans LB Josh Smith) and one came off (Vikings LB Cameron Smith). Overall, that’s a good day.
• If Derrius Guice did what he claimed to have done, his NFL career would be over. The details, if you have not seen them, are terrible.
• Question or comment? Email us.
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