With no end in sight to the NFL lockout, the Atlanta Falcons have begun working for free.
Falcons linebacker Coy Wire and right tackle Tyson Clabo are running the team’s offseason conditioning program, and they told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that 30 players showed up Monday for the first day at a local training facility. They expect just about every player who’s planning to be on the 2011 Falcons to participate in the workouts at some point.
“We have to take it upon ourselves to continue working in a manner that will allow us to continue to establish ourselves as one of the top teams in the NFL,” Wire said. “We don’t want to skip a beat.”
There’s an argument to be made that it’s counterproductive for players to organize workouts because of the risk of injury and because it makes it easier for the owners to lock the players out for most of the offseason and still have the players ready when the regular season starts. But Wire said it’s more important to him to have the team in shape and ready to play.
“We’ve been a team that’s healthy and a team that endures through the end in the fourth quarter,” Wire said. “We want to maintain what we’ve been doing.”
The team is split into two groups who work out four days a week at either 8 a.m. or 9:30 a.m., and the workouts are being led by a personal trainer who has specifically designed the program to be similar to what Falcons director of athletic performance Jeff Fish does.
So Falcons owner Arthur Blank can rest assured that when he and his fellow owners are done locking the players out, he’ll have a bunch of players who are ready to work.
