A Fine “Underwear” Day
April 18th, 2012
Reports say Greg Schiano busted out a synchronized swimming analogy to his young defense yesterday.
One of the all-time great Raheem Morris quotes featured his take in 2010 on transitioning from OTAs and minicamps to the broiling heat and real live contact in training camp.
“Training camp is a little bit different. You know to me, that’s when you establish the men. You know you take off your underwear. You put on your big boy pads. And you put your face on people. And that’s what training camp is about.” — Raheem Morris
Joe admits that cracks him up every time, and reading it in print doesn’t do it justice. The video is a knockout.
The reason Joe brings up that Raheem gem is because Joe can’t bring himself to overanalyze anything the Bucs did yesterday in an April underwear practice at One Buc Palace, the first of the offseason for Greg Schiano and staff. Of course, Joe realizes this entire website is devoted to overanalyzing everything the Bucs do, but Joe has to stop the madness once in a while. Raheem’s message did have a lot of truth to it.
The media got to watch 30 minutes of yesterday’s workout — much of that time was stretching and running — and then chat with Schiano a couple hours later. Good guy Craig Smith, of WHBO-AM, has an excellent, thorough summary on ESPNFlorida.com.
Yeah, Ronde Barber ran around at safety a little. No big surprise. And Quincy Black got the opportunity to bark out the defense. That doesn’t mean anything in reality other than Schiano wants Black, among others, to get some of that experience in his new system.
As Joe wrote about earlier, what’s really meaningful from these practices, aside from learning the playbook, is Schiano changing the culture and discipline within the organization. Smith touched on that in his summary.
However, the voice you could hear over all coaches was Schiano’s. At one point, Schiano was working with a full defense and made an interesting reference. He compared eleven defenders working together to synchronized swimming. To hit his point home, he had the defense line up and sprint sideline to sideline after imaginary “ballcarriers” in an effort to emphasize gang tackling, which is something this defense certainly lacked in 2011.
Apparently everyone showed up for the voluntary practice except for Connor Barth. And the Bucs will be back at it today and Thursday.
Look for Joe to get back to obsessing about practice, but for now Joe’s just going to look at yesterday for what it was — an underwear day at the start of a long offseason process.
April 18th, 2012 at 8:07 am
Coach said an unnamed defensive player didn’t show up (who was it)? and is Brian Price in shape
April 18th, 2012 at 8:25 am
Team Jockey?
April 18th, 2012 at 8:37 am
Starting to love Schiano who I now think is the anti-Raheem Morris. No buddy buddy with the players, no beer drinking and card playing, just a hard nose coach demanding excellence. Morris will go down as the worst coach in Buccaneer history in my mind and his poor coaching has left the fan base very apathetic but I think Schiano is the guy to bring the fans back. He values character, hard work and attention to detail (all things Raheem could care less about.) Its a new day in Tampa Bay gotta love it. I will say some of these Bucs wont make it but I will be glad to see them go.
April 18th, 2012 at 8:39 am
The discipline stuff reminds me of Dungy… Let’s just hope our offense isn’t as boring…
April 18th, 2012 at 8:42 am
Barth is a malcontent! Cut him!
April 18th, 2012 at 9:06 am
I’m looking forward to not having to watch Raheem throwing the challenge flag on calls that have no shot of being reversed.
April 18th, 2012 at 9:19 am
im very excited bout schiano n when it comes to morris he was just a coach who got to close to his employees its just lik any job if ur incharge of people you can b “friends” but u cant b everyones bestie all the time it ruins u in the real world n the football world i dnt believe he was the worst their was ray perkins n a few others i would put on tht list bfore raheem i think tht when raheem gets another shot n he will trust me i think he will b a damn good coach he has the oppurtunity to learn from his mistakes n move on n i insure u he will
April 18th, 2012 at 9:23 am
•In fact, the only players not in attendance were Connor Barth, who is not presently under contract after receiving the franchise tag earlier this offseason, and a mystery player that Schiano referenced at his press conference who he expected to be there.
April 18th, 2012 at 9:27 am
The Fire of Jon Gruden with the Discipline of Tony Dungy =’s Greg Schiano!
It’s a new day in Tampa !
April 18th, 2012 at 9:30 am
I didnt see Brian Price out there, did anyone else?
April 18th, 2012 at 9:32 am
There was a player that Schiano said he expected to show and didn’t and he’d get to the bottom of it. It wasn’t Barth. Not sure why we keep revisiting Raheem Morris. It’s time to turn the page Joe. There’s a new sheriff in town.. Let’s get some stories on the training camp and how everyone is adjusting.
April 18th, 2012 at 9:37 am
Don’t think the players are free to speak, otherwise we would have heard from them.
April 18th, 2012 at 10:37 am
@ Brad
From what I’ve heard, Schiano has a virtual gag-order on the players and coaches, so there won’t be much to report on outside of the 30 minutes the reporters are allowed into (which apparently will be warm-up sessions).
Also, please keep in mind, that until the games actually start, there’s bound to be near endless comparisons between Schiano and Morris, since there’s not much else to write about (there’s the draft in just over a week, that will get dissected every which way for the week following, then back to how Schiano runs things vs. how Raheem ran things).
April 18th, 2012 at 10:44 am
@ Travis
There’s a pic of Schiano and Brian Price from yesterday’s practice on tbo.com
April 18th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Im sure if we could look, we would see that Raheem had both legs through one leg hole in his underwear.