Is An Indoor Practice Facility On The Horizon?
September 15th, 2010
Somewhere, Woody Hayes is rolling in his grave! And Bill Cowher is rolling his eyes.
Joe mocks and snickers when he sees NFL teams using indoor practice facilities, basically mini-versions of the Fruitdome. Why does Joe laugh? Because big, bad NFL players can’t practice in the elements?
Hayes used to love having practices in the rain because he said it gave his team a chance to learn how to play with a wet ball. Cowher used to say it gave his teams advantages they couldn’t hope to otherwise prepare for.
So Joe finds it interesting that good guy Stephen Holder, of the St. Petersburg Times, believes the Bucs are wishing they had an indoor facility when he noted the Bucs again this week will practice at the Fruitdome.
Last week, the Bucs made a last-minute change to their practice schedule and held a practice at the Trop in an effort to give players a break from rigorous practices in the sun at One Buc Place.
Whether this becomes a regular occurrence or not remains to be seen. But all this does certainly underscore how the Bucs could definitely take advantage of an indoor practice bubble like many teams around the league use.
Eh, unless there’s a lightning storm, practice outside! Football is played in the elements so why not practice in the elements?
September 15th, 2010 at 8:07 am
Agreed Joe. Outside of the occasional indoor practice due to extreme weather or heat, there’s no need to drop the kind of cheddar necessary to build an indoor facility…especially in Tampa where the weather seems pretty nice all year round.
September 15th, 2010 at 8:18 am
Practice outside boys. It gives us an advantage.
September 15th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Hey, maybe we can trade stadiums with the Rays! One or two outfields would be a little short. But we would have a good team in Ray Jay for the 1st time in awhile!
September 15th, 2010 at 8:43 am
If you’re talking about heat, maybe.
If you’re talking about rain…”Football is played in the elements so why not practice in the elements?”
That’s easy: increased risk of injury.
September 15th, 2010 at 8:56 am
the only reasoning for an indoor facility that I would accept is for example training camp when they lose a bunch of time due to lightning…
Otherwise, this sounds like a great way to throw away one of the biggest advantages to playing at home in Tampa – being conditioned to deal with the heat.
September 15th, 2010 at 9:13 am
They go once in a while to practice indoors and you all act like they are biggest pu$$ies on the planet!
September 15th, 2010 at 10:16 am
There is a difference between being drained by the heat and conditioned to the heat. We saw on Sunday that are team could stand up to the heat when the defense shut Cleveland down (I know that is not saying much). The point is that last week and probably this week Raheem sees that his team is sluggish at practice and he wants to make sure that the he is not draining their energy. You want players to be conditioned but you don’t want to drain all their energy before the game that matters.
September 15th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Hey look everyone!! Tampa2 finally showed up!! What happened , T2?? Though you guaranteed we would lose last week, and be embarrassed! Wow, turns out beat a pretty good team, mainly because Raheem Morris out coached Mancini?? You couldn’t have been more wrong. See,I was right all along!:) I told you that you were Stupid!! Now you’ve proved it ! Good job