“No One Is Really 100 Percent”
June 12th, 2015
Lovie explains how underwear football takes a toil on the body.
Joe loved playing football as a kid. Just loved it. Loved everything about it. Well, except those godawful two-a-days on 98-degree afternoons in the middle of the cornfields.
And, no, Joe and his teammates didn’t have the luxury of underwear football. It was full pads. Joe was never in the military but imagines this was damned close to boot camp.
Those two weeks were agony away from the football field, too. Joe was sore as hell each summer, could barely walk. As sick as it sounds, you wanted to practice with full pads in the furnace of a Midwestern summer because that was the only way your legs and shoulders would loosen up and the pain would slowly fade.
You really had to love football to willingly tolerate this each and every summer.
So Joe was a bit surprised to learn yesterday from Bucs coach Lovie Smith that NFLers, too, are sore — from underwear football, no less. Joe imagined the way these guys work out in the offseason, underwear football wouldn’t bother them at all. But it does, said Lovie, when he was asked about wide receiver Mike Evan’s health.
“Full strength, nobody is full strength right now,” Lovie said. “He practiced for the most part right now. Just as an overall description of our team, we have some bumps and bruises. No one is really 100 percent right now, but good enough to practice. You should be sore right now. We have three days left to go. We should have some bumps and bruises, which we have. Nothing major that is going to stop guys from missing significant time when we come back.”
Honestly, this caught Joe by surprise. It’s understandable that high school kids (in the Joe’s youth culture) who just lifted bottles of beer in the summer were sore from the first weeks of practice. But professional athletes being sore from underwear football with the offseason conditioning they go through?
This also tells Joe underwear football may be more intense than it appears with the naked eye.
June 12th, 2015 at 11:21 am
Yea i bet it was rough on you Joe. Distributing all that water and towels can really take its toll
June 12th, 2015 at 11:24 am
You probably meant “toll”, but I just went ahead and looked up “toil”. It’s actually surprisingly accurate Joe
June 12th, 2015 at 11:35 am
OK, time to get the grammar cops going.
Joe used the word “toll” as in paying a price. Joe always used the word “toil” as a verb.
Have at it English majors.
June 12th, 2015 at 11:39 am
Think joe would want nothing better to see these players naked with his eyes
[Joe knows you have been on a rampage about him of late. Don’t like the site, there are lesser places you can go for Bucs news. — Joe]
June 12th, 2015 at 11:58 am
Educating the TB area on the best Bucs news and English usage since ’08.
It’s why I’m here daily Joe.
June 12th, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Not an English major, and never took an English class in college, but your picture still has “toil” as part of the caption. I agree with “toll”.
tickrdr
June 12th, 2015 at 12:57 pm
At least you weren’t in the GMO cornfields back then.
June 12th, 2015 at 2:26 pm
Still a Lovie believer but anyone else notice these interviews (check out the vids on the Bucs site) with him show him to be a bit thin skinned frankly. He always reacts to some pretty benign questions from the local reporters with a dismissive “you know you guys…harrumph” before proceeding to give a somewhat testy or passive aggressive answer. I know it would piss me off if I were a reporter and I would just be waiting to write that first retaliatory article painting him in a bad light. Chill out Lovie. Or is it just me reading too much into his demeanor?
June 12th, 2015 at 2:49 pm
I must admit I’m sometimes amused by guys who come here to bust Joe’s balls.
Why? I don’t agree with everything they post but they obviously pay the price and do their homework and are clearly wired into what’s going on with the Bucs.
But now we’re down to typos.
Some of you may be new to internet blogging. Challenging typos and grammatical errors is considered one of the lowest forms of trolling and is disrespected.
Some posters here are typing on tiny mobile devices and you’re really worried about typing and grammar? Luckily I’m on a big laptop but I still have plenty of typos and grammar screwups. It’s not Freshman English class here!
June 12th, 2015 at 4:02 pm
I look right past the typos every time, mine and others. Lovie does seem a little irked at questions, what I expect from people with authority.