The Buccaneers didn’t practice on Tuesday, by choice. They didn’t practice on Wednesday, not by choice.
“We gave them off Tuesday; Tuesday was their day off,” coach Todd Bowles said Thursday, per Scott Smith of Buccaneers.com. “Wednesday was by the league, because at the first practice we had too many guys on the ground, so they took a practice from us. So Wednesday was by their doing, Tuesday was already set in motion by our doing. And they cleaned it up after that. We understand. We aren’t trying to get anybody hurt. That was the basis of it.”
Bowles said “about three or four plays” created the issue.
“We’re trying to practice safety as well,” Bowles said. “We’ve got a lot of new guys trying to learn how to practice, but we cleaned that up and kind of took care of it.”
It’s not easy to get the players to dial it back — especially the ones that are trying to move from the 90-man roster to the final 53-man roster. Still, the team is responsible to keep things from going too far.
Even with periodic glitches, it’s not as bad as it used to be. Twenty years ago, contact was rampant in offseason workouts. To the point where some offensive linemen wanted to wear pads, since their shoulders were getting banged around by helmets.
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