Peter King is oddly not OT
This week's mailbag was oddly relevant:
"If the Green Bay Packers make the ascension from 6-10 last year to the playoffs this year -- and it's not beyond the realm of possibility given the play of their first units on offense and defense in the preseason -- I've got an unlikely primary reason: the offseason program."You really have to go and read the whole article because I'm not going to copy and paste the whole thing, but he goes on to claim that there is a correlation between successful teams in the NFL and their dedication to offseason conditioning (big surprise, right?). I just thought it was odd that the NCAA seemingly can't keep players out of the weight room and a paycheck apparently can't keep them in it. Where has common sense gone? There's also an interesting mention of the Browns not having good attendance, one of those players being, yep, Braylon Edwards. FWIW. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/peter_king/09/01/mail/ind…
September 1st, 2009 at 6:01 PM ^
College players work harder to earn that paycheck. Once they make it big in the NFL, some may lose that fire.
This is similar to the Contract year phenomenon where players (particularly in baseball) tend to have career years when they are in the last year of a contract since they want to get paid.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:01 PM ^
Well, I'm sure that some players that get to the NFL don't go to workouts as much as other players because they didn't have great habits of going to workouts in college. Those kind of players might have gotten in simply because even in the world of freakish athletes (D-I football) they were still freaky and thus didn't have to try as hard.
Additionally, I'm sure that for some players, when they reach the NFL they know that they have arrived. They know that there is nowhere higher for them to go (unless they realize that within the NFL there are many "levels" that you can attain, there's a big difference between Tom Brady and Jon Kitna). If they truly feel that they have "arrived" then there is less motivation for them to work. Yes, a paycheck is motivation, but a lot of people (myself included) do better with additional motivations other than money. Perhaps many NFL players are like that too and need to always be looking for that next level to attain. If they feel that they are already there, then they're less likely to go to extra workouts.
Who knows though, maybe all the workout rooms just smell really really bad.