When the Buccaneers lost an OTA day due to excessive contact during practice, coach Todd Bowles didn’t say much about it. More recently, Buccaneers assistant G.M. Mike Greenberg elaborated, a bit.
“We’ve had a great offseason, a lot of energy, a lot of good stuff between the offense and defensive line,” Greenberg said on The Ronde Barber Show, via JoeBucsFan.com. “It’s been fun being out there, but with that comes sometimes a little bit too much contact. And Todd’s got to regulate it a lot after each play, which he does a great job of.”
Although every practice is recorded, not every practice is scrutinized by the league. As Greenberg explains it, the league randomly selected a practice that entailed too much contact.
“The league, really, they’ll just ask for [practice] tape randomly from teams from time to time,” Greenberg said. “They’ll get through everyone; sometimes they’ll go through teams twice. And they picked a day, if we’re being honest, we did have contact and we did deserve to lose an OTA day.”
Frankly, if the league (and the NFL Players Association) were intent on fully protecting players and enforcing the rules, both parties would assign one or more employees to watch every OTA practice. If teams know it’s random, they may be willing to roll the dice on certain days.
If it’s comprehensive, they know there’s no way to get lucky.
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