Get ready for the Oklahoma drill in Denver?
Broncos running back Phillip Lindsay is ready. Lindsay said new head coach Vic Fangio has told the players that they should be prepared for an old-school training camp that’s tougher than modern players may be used to.
“He’s already had a few words for us,” Lindsay said, via Mike Klis of 9 News in Denver. “He’s a no nonsense coach. He’s going to be old school. I wouldn’t be surprised if minicamp and training camp is like 1960s back in the day. We need it.”
Realistically, no NFL coach can run a 1960s-style training camp today. The Collective Bargaining Agreement simply doesn’t allow coaches to put players through the kinds of lengthy full-contract practices, day after day, that were the norm when Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry were coaching.
Nor should they: The sport has changed. Teams are wisely more concerned about keeping players healthy than they were in those days. In the 1960s, NFL players often spent six months doing other jobs in the offseason and showed up to training camp out of shape. Now most players take their conditioning seriously year-round and don’t need to be whipped into shape the way they were half a century ago.
Fangio may run a tougher training camp than most NFL coaches in 2019. But no NFL coach in 2019 will run a training camp like the 1960s.